The Institute for Free Speech contends that the measure sidesteps the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United and infringes upon organizations’ First Amendment protections.
A coordinated effort to bypass the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) is gaining momentum nationwide. It has also prompted a legal challenge in Montana.
This week, Montana residents approved I-194. The ballot measure undertaken by citizens updates state law to bar “artificial persons” from spending “money or anything of value” to influence the electorate’s vote. By defined terms, “artificial persons” include nonprofits, trusts, partnerships, corporations, trade associations, unions, and unincorporated associations. The prohibition applies to any entity conducting business within Montana.
The measure mirrors much of the language found in Hawaii’s August law, which stripped corporations operating there of their power to spend money or to contribute anything of value to influence elections or ballot measures. Under Montana’s I-194, the “absence of political spending power” becomes a prerequisite for any entity seeking state-granted legal status and charter privileges. The statute would require every corporation desiring to support or oppose a cause in Montana to channel its funds through a political committee.
The Frontier Institute, the Frontier Action Fund, the Montana Family Foundation, and the Montana Republican State Central Committee have now petitioned the courts to challenge the statute. “This law tries to achieve indirectly what the Constitution forbids outright: silencing groups that engage in political advocacy,” stated Owen Yeates, senior counsel at the Institute for Free Speech, the nonprofit organization that filed the suit on their behalf.
The Institute for Free Speech—which is leading the lawsuit against Hawaii’s statute as well—filed the case Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana. It seeks to block enforcement of I-194 and asks the district court to declare the statute “unconstitutionally void and unenforceable, as it infringes upon First Amendment rights of speech, association, petition, assembly, and the press.”
The complaint argues that I-194 “deprives the individuals who comprise these groups—particularly those who are not part of the majority or who are not already wielding public instruments of power—of the ability to pool their resources and thus influence policy.” The filing quotes directly from the Supreme Court’s opinion in Citizens United, asserting that I-194 diminishes Montanans’ right to “inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus,” a prerogative the Court recognized as essential to informed self-government and a necessary means to safeguard it.
In fact, Montana’s measure appears to clash with the Court’s ruling in Citizens United, which holds that there is no sufficiently important governmental interest justifying limits on the political speech of nonprofits or for-profit corporations. Yet the drafters of the initiative insist they are not attempting to “overturn or eliminate or violate” Citizens United; they simply want to render it irrelevant.
The Transparent Election Initiative (TEI), a nonprofit established in 2025, spearheaded the Montana ballot effort. The organization is the brainchild of Tom Moore, a senior fellow at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress who helped craft Hawaii’s statute, and Jeff Mangan, the former Montana commissioner of political practices.
With the measure approved, Montana joins Hawaii as one of only two states to have enacted a law redefining corporations as entities lacking the power to spend money or contribute anything of value in the political arena. That status, however, may not endure.
Legislatures in at least 15 other states, including California, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, are examining or have weighed similar measures aimed at stripping corporations of their political spending capacity. TEI argues that “wealthy special interests exert outsized influence” over U.S. politics, marginalizing ordinary citizens from the political process. Yet the group’s most visible backers include a circle of political elites, such as two former Montana governors, a former Montana senator, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
TEI also drew the single largest donation on either side of the campaign: a $722,300 financial contribution from Samantha Walton, the wife of Walmart heir Lukas Walton. The organization may disdain the current system, but it is willing to exploit it to advance its aims.
On its website, TEI concedes that “organized political campaigning” is a prerequisite to “qualify for and succeed at the ballot box.” Nevertheless, it remains actively committed to preventing other groups from exercising the same constitutional rights. In the absence of an injunction, the law is slated to take effect on January 1, 2027.
