The Era of Citizens United Could Be Nearing Its End

Tomte 24 points 10 comments April 24, 2026
jacobin.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (4 comments)

voidfunc

This won't go anywhere. Too much influence at stake. The court will just decline.

toss1

Another, probably better method that avoids SCOTUS to overturn Citizen's United is going back to the source — the fact that states create corporations and specify their allowed activities — and amending state corporate-charter law to strip corporations of the enumerated power to spend on elections or ballot issues. AFAIK, bills are already in progress in Montana, Maine, and I just heard about one in Hawaii too. If anyone has more info, please post.

jmclnx

Pretty bad these days the outcome of a court case will depend upon what political party will be put at a disadvantage. Even this article tryed to frame the case as "no political party will be disadvantaged". There is no law in the US these days.

atmavatar

I find the idea that the current Roberts court would issue a ruling reducing corruption a laughable proposition. Roberts, Alito, and Thomas were part of the original majority in the Citizens United v. FEC decision, and I have a hard time believing more than one of Barrett, Kavanaugh, or Gorsuch would break ranks in a similar case. But perhaps more importantly, several justices on the court have also since been revealed to have accepted undisclosed gifts (i.e., bribes) for decades (Thomas being the largest offender). Worse, the justices failed to recuse themselves from cases involving those who'd provided said gifts. Even worse, once the story broke about the undisclosed gifts, the Roberts court rejected the idea of independent ethics review for the court's members, insisting it could continue to be trusted to police itself despite the revelations of its own corruption. The Roberts court is a very pro-corruption court.

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