Hawaii Legislature passes first-in-nation bill targeting Citizens United ruling

LEDE:

HONOLULU (CN) — Invoking America’s Founding Fathers, the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the outsized influence of the sugar industry over island politics, Hawaii lawmakers on Friday passed a first-in-the-nation bill to strip corporations of the power to spend money in state elections.

The bill takes aim at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections. Lawmakers, drawing from a legal theory developed by the Center for American Progress, argued that because states create corporations and grant them their powers, Hawaii could simply decline to grant corporations the power to spend in elections.