Supporters of the bill say citizens, rather than corporations, should have more power in elections.
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.
The Democrat-dominated Hawaii Legislature voted 24-0 in the Senate and 50-1 in the House to send Senate Bill 2471 to Governor Josh Green’s desk. If signed into law, it would take effect July 1, 2027.
The House floor debate
In the House, Republican state Representative Kanani Souza opened debate with a call to action.
“Plainly, who does this democracy belong to?” Souza said. “Is it the people of Hawaii whose voices, votes and lived realities give meaning to this institution? Or is it corporations, entities created by the state, empowered by law, enriched by privilege, but never intended to stand as political equals to the very people who granted them existence?”
Souza argued that Citizens United had fundamentally distorted American democracy by elevating corporate spending into a force no individual voter could realistically match.
“Hawaii is not waiting for permission, not following the lead of others,” she said. “We are leading.”
Not every House member was persuaded. State Representative Chris Muraoka, also a Republican, said he supported the bill’s intent but warned that Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez had already concluded the measure would likely be struck down in court and that taxpayers would bear the cost of defending it.
“The people of Hawaii, who are already struggling to afford life here, will have to foot another bill,” Muraoka said.
He cast the only “no” vote in the House.
State Representative Scott Matayoshi, a Democrat, acknowledged the legal risk but said that was precisely the point. He noted Citizens United itself was a lawsuit that overturned the existing law of the land, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and argued states need to show similarly challenge problematic laws.
“If the states are not brave enough to challenge Citizens United and other court rulings at the highest court in the land, those rulings will stand forever,” Matayoshi said. “We need states to step forward in order to challenge these rulings.”
Matayoshi also pointed to a key failsafe built into the conference draft: If a court were to strike down the bill’s application to out-of-state entities while leaving the Hawaii restrictions intact, the measure would automatically unbind Hawaii corporations, preventing a scenario in which mainland corporate money flooded in while local voices were silenced.
In the Senate
Democratic state Senator Karl Rhoads, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the bill’s lead author, said Hawaii’s opposition to Citizens United dates back to the day the ruling came down.
In April 2010, just months after the decision, the Legislature passed a concurrent resolution calling on Congress to propose a constitutional amendment to overturn it. Sixteen years later, Rhoads said, nothing had changed except the scale of the problem.
“In 2006, dark money was less than $5 million nationwide,” Rhoads said. “In 2024, there was over $1 billion, with a B, anonymously spent in the presidential election alone.”
Rhoads warned the anonymity of dark money also invited foreign interference.
“It’s very difficult to know whether Russia or Iran or China are funneling money into American elections,” he said.
Democratic Senator Jarrett Keohokalole drew a sharp distinction between the rights of citizens and the powers of corporations, a distinction he said Citizens United had blurred.
“Our rights as individual people don’t come from the government or the Constitution,” Keohokalole said. “As Thomas Jefferson said, all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. They pre-exist the government. The government doesn’t grant us rights. They recognize and protect them.”
Corporate powers, Keohokalole argued, are an entirely different matter.
“They are created by state law,” he said, paraphrasing Chief Justice John Marshall’s 1819 opinion in* Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward*: “A corporation is an artificial being. It possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.”
He then drew a direct line from that history to Hawaii’s own experience with corporate power. The overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, he said, was organized and executed by sugar companies. The “Big Five” then ruled Hawaii for 50 years before a new generation of residents ran for office, took over the Legislature and won statehood, workers’ rights and healthcare for the islands.
“As elected leaders, we do not serve artificial entities,” Keohokalole said. “We serve the people, and now is the time for us to step up again and be the first state in the nation to act for them.”
The state’s Department of the Attorney General testified in opposition, warning the bill is likely impossible to defend without Citizens United being overturned. Some labor groups also opposed the measure, arguing it could restrict unions’ political activity, though a proposed union carve-out was rejected in conference.
Friday marked the final day of Hawaii’s 2026 legislative session. Green now has until June 30 to announce any potential vetoes, and until July 15 to either sign bills into law, issue a final veto list or allow measures to become law without his signature. Lawmakers could then reconvene in a one-day special session to override any vetoes.