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Signed into law on May 14, 2026, Act 11 uses the state’s authority over corporations and other artificial entities to remove their power to spend money influencing elections and ballot measures. The law is scheduled to take effect July 1, 2027. It targets corporate political spending rather than eliminating all money from elections.

For Move to Amend, this fight raises a fundamental question: Who governs—the people, or the artificial entities our laws create?

What Hawaiʻi’s law does

The approach begins with a straightforward principle: corporations exist because laws create them. Those laws grant privileges, including limited liability, and define the powers corporations may exercise.

Hawaiʻi’s legislature asserts that those powers should not include spending money to support or oppose candidates, political parties, political committees, or ballot measures. The legislation distinguishes the powers granted to artificial entities from the speech, petition, and association rights of human beings. It also includes exceptions for bona fide news coverage, commentary, and editorials, and provisions allowing qualifying political committees to operate.

Known as the Corporate Power Reset, this strategy seeks to address corporate election spending through the laws that define corporations themselves. Its supporters argue that states can withdraw political spending powers without directly overturning Citizens United. Whether courts accept that distinction is now being tested.

Who is challenging it?

The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, represented by the Institute for Free Speech, filed its challenge in June. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a separate lawsuit on September 24. Both seek to block the law.

The Chamber argues that Act 11 violates First Amendment protections for corporations and other organizations and conflicts with Supreme Court precedent. Hawaiʻi’s defense centers on its authority to define corporate powers.

At an October 13 hearing, U.S. District Judge Leslie Kobayashi expressed skepticism toward the state’s arguments and indicated that she viewed the law as restricting political speech. She did not issue a ruling at the hearing, taking the competing motions under advisement. The law has not been struck down by that hearing.

Why this matters beyond Hawaiʻi

Move to Amend supports efforts to challenge corporate political power at the state level. Organizing around corporate powers can educate communities, build coalitions, and put a basic democratic principle into practice: the people should determine the privileges of the entities their laws create.

But the lawsuits also expose the constitutional obstacle confronting that work. When corporations invoke constitutional rights to resist public control, communities must defend their decisions within a legal framework that grants artificial entities protections intended for people.

That is why state action and constitutional change belong together.

Overturning Citizens United alone is not enough. Move to Amend’s goal reaches beyond one decision: ending corporate constitutional rights and the treatment of money spent influencing elections as protected speech.

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FEDSOC

Sep102025

Topics:

Free Speech & Election Law

Sponsors:

Free Speech Practice Group• Election Law Practice Group

• Webinar

Event Video

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InDinner Table Action v. Schneider, pending in the First Circuit, Maine is appealing a permanent injunction barring the enforcement of a ballot initiative passed in 2024 that would have capped contributions for independent expenditures at $5,000. The initiative, formulated and supported by the anti-super PAC group, Equal Citizens, was designed to challenge the case that “created” super PACs, SpeechNow.orgv. FEC, a unanimous en banc D.C. Circuit decision, which held that no limits can be placed on contributions for independent expenditures, and has since been reaffirmed by several federal circuit courts. If the First Circuit were to remove the injunction, it would create a circuit split, and open up the possibility of revisiting SpeechNow.orgv. FEC.

The Dinner Table ActionDistrict Court also ruled that mandatory disclosure of donors starting at $0 unconstitutionally burdens Free Speech by not affording any possibility for anonymous speech. As such, this case sits at an interesting intersection between free speech and election law. Join us for a litigation update where we will discuss the developments to date in this case, its potential impacts, and where it may be headed.

Featuring:

• Charles Miller, Senior Attorney, Institute for Free Speech
• (Moderator) Stephen R. Klein, Partner, Barr & Klein PLLC

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COC

KAREN FRINK WOLF MAGISTR JUDGE JUL 15 2025

Opinion-Dinner-Table-Action-v.-Schneider-D.-Me

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exxon ~ ESG, chevron cono ~ SEC/ESG:

all big CTT ~ Comments to SEC on ESG rule: comments from CHEVRONacc chem, AEI, AFP, API, cato, cei heartland etc CTT, CoC, co2 coalition, conoco phillips, enbridge, inst for free speech,

Gensler: On behalf of the Institute for Free Speech,1 I respectfully submit the following comments climate change disclosures that Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee discussed in her March 15, 2021, public statement.2 .

p. 153 1 occurrence

Respectfully submitted, /s/ Ryan Morrison Ryan Morrison, Attorney INSTITUTE FOR FREE SPEECH 14 NAM II, 800 F.3d at 526 (quoting Edenfield v. heritage, nam, NMA, noia, lifepowered TPPF, WEA western energy? US oil and gas

june 2022

https://www.vox.com/23058987/sec-climate-finance-disclosure

as drought spreads and sea levels rise, the economic impacts of climate change will run in the trillions of dollars. The insurance firm Swiss Re projects climate disasters would cost the world as much as $23 trillion by 2050, bigger than the impact from the pandemic and the Great Recession of 2009 combined.

It’s reasonable business planning to account for all this foreseeable risk — just like planning for cyberattacks or business disruptions from a pandemic. Last year, for instance, the US had to spend $145 billion dealing with floods, fires, and other climate-related disasters.

Yet somehow, climate change has fallen through the cracks of US financial regulation. Publicly traded companies are required to disclose information about “material” risks that affect their company regardless of their cause, from sanctions to supply chain chaos. But there are no uniform standards for disclosing how much fossil fuel pollution they generate or the impact that climate change could have on their future growth. Instead, companies have been left free to inflate their environmental progress, all with little scrutiny from the public.

This kind of information is, in theory, essential to a functioning free market, so investors can make decisions based on complete information. But fossil fuel interests, conservative ideologues, and corporate trade groups are striving to keep shareholders in the dark on climate risks.

The Biden administration is trying to make companies more publicly accountable for the risk of the climate crisis. A linchpin of Biden’s plan is a draft rule theSecurities and Exchange Commission (SEC)proposed in March. Over 500 pages, the SEC rule proposes that publicly traded companies disclose how climate change affects their business outlook and identify a board member or board committee to focus on climate-related risks.

Once the rule is finalized, companies will have to disclose how their operations are affected by extreme weather events and the impact of climate change on the short- and medium-term business outlook. They’ll also have to report the emissions both from their company’s operations and from how their products are used. This is particularly bad news for fossil fuel companies with business models predicated on selling pollution. Until this rule, they haven’t had to fully account for the environmental impact from things like selling gas that’s burned by consumers’ cars.

This is a rule, in other words, that helps the free market act like the free market, giving investors exactly the information they need to make the decisions,” Emory University business law expert George Georgiev said.

As the draft rule’s comment period came to a close, it’s clear any regulation on climate change faces serious headwinds. The loudest protests have come from right-wing groups and corporate-aligned nonprofits that have flooded the public comments with previews of the argument they’ll take to courts.

Plenty of businesses in the financial sector stand to benefit from this rule, like the investing giant BlackRock, which has pledged to align its assets with climate goals. But some could be hurt. The companies that benefit from greenwashing their climate commitments are doing everything they can to protect the chaotic status quo.

Financial transparency on climate change is hardly a radical idea

The SEC has required and standardized public company disclosures since 1933. In recent decades, the SEC has issued nonbinding guidance on how publicly traded companies should consider Covid-19 disruptions, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and even a feared “Y2K” meltdown at the turn of the 21st century, so the companies would meet their fiduciary duty.

But the SEC has been painfully slow on climate change. Right now, businesses disclose the risks and costs of their business on the climate on a voluntary, patchy basis with no clear standardization.

A 2020 Government Accountability Office surveyed 32 midsize and large publicly traded companies and found little consistency. Airlines, for example, used years anywhere between 1990 and 2017 as the baseline for calculating their climate footprint. Water companies have used completely different measurements for reporting water extraction. Some companies would just report carbon emissions, while others would report total greenhouse gas emissions (including sources like methane).

The proposed SEC rule cites other evidence of companies not paying attention to this risk, like an internal survey of climate-related keywords in companies’ 10-Ks between June 2019 and December 2020. They found only 31 percent mentioned climate change at all.

This information is not just to benefit climate change efforts; it is also useful to investors. It makes clearer, for instance, that a retail company’s warehouses might be threatened by increased flooding, that an airline company might have to ground more flights because of rising heat waves, or that a bank’s backing of major fossil fuel expansion has the strong chance of backfiring in a world that transitions to renewables. Without any regulation and standardization, companies will just continue to try to outshine one another on their environmental and social commitments without hard data to back it. This mismatch will become an existential risk to financial instability if, for example, extreme weather pummels a business that did not prepare accordingly.

Environmental activists have pushed for more from companies by proposing shareholder resolutions at annual meetings that ask for more transparency, but have met with mixed success in shareholder votes that don’t bind the company to taking action.

In this regulatory vacuum, voluntary global affiliations have cropped up, including the Net Zero Assets Managers Initiative, representing some $43 trillion in assets, and Climate Action 100+, representing more than $60 trillion. Another of these groups is run out of the Financial Stability Board as a Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), a voluntary system that has grown to more than 3,000 companies. The task force’s recommendations tell companies to consider the short-, medium-, and long-term climate impacts, emissions that result from investment decisions, and their operations’ pollution, and account for the changing climate’s consequences for the business. The hundreds of companies that voluntarily comply with these standards aren’t necessarily green or good for the environment, but it’s an extra gold star for their sustainability transparency.

Eight countries, including the UK, have passed laws that will mirror the TFCD’s recommendations, but the US would remain an outlier without the SEC rule. “Investors put their money where they think there’s a good opportunity and good information,” said Steven Rothstein, managing director of the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets. “If we don’t have good information, we run the risk of falling behind internationally.”

The SEC’s rule is basically the US playing catch-up, based on standards the mainstream corporate community aligned with TFCD have already backed.

Initially, companies will have to spend extra to comply with the rule — up to $530,000 a year for larger companies by the SEC’s estimate, but it will vary depending on how much companies are doing already on climate disclosure. Typically, the costs of rules shrink over time. Otherwise, the rule itself is quite modest. The SEC is “not saying you should or shouldn’t invest in climate products,” Rothstein said. “They’re just saying, tell investors what you’re doing and do it in a consistent way.”

Environmentalists and some Democratic lawmakers argue the SEC could be doing even more. The SEC does not change how companies disclose climate-related activities like PR campaigns and political influence, the kind of activities that tend to be outsourced to nonprofits that shield their activities from the public. In March, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called it a “failure of nerve that shies away from a perfectly legal, necessary response to the climate danger we face” because political efforts remain “the single most material disclosures a company could make to achieve climate safety.”

Right-wing groups claim financial transparency is an attack on free speech

Unsurprisingly, the SEC is facing immense pressure to withdraw this rule because of the same shadowy political spending that companies don’t have to disclose in the first place. Groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, Americans for Prosperity, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have flooded the SEC with comments that argue company free speech would be violated.

Trade groups and right-wing think tanks have argued that requiring companies to report these emissions is akin to violating their First Amendment rights of free speech, pointing to a court case that ruled a regulation requiring the disclosure of conflict-zone minerals would amount to :{“:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}::{compelled speech”:(style="background-color:#ff6600;"):}: and violated the companies’ rights.

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry lobby, has argued the rule “could raise serious First Amendment issues under recent applying strict scrutiny to content-based laws compelling speech.”

The argument has found purchase with conservative lawmakers, like West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey,who picked up the argument in his 2021 letter to Treasury last year. In Congress, 19 Republican senators argued in their submitted comments that the rule is “not within the SEC’s mission to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.” Another 40 Republican representatives wrote that the rule will act to “undermine and shame public companies,” while Republican attorneys general describes the rule as a “total reordering of [the SEC’s] present disclosure regime.”

The attack on regulation under the guise of First Amendment rights has become more familiar in recent years. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has been steadily giving corporations more and more leeway, more and more rights,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a corporate law expert who has published several books on corporate speech.

The court also opened the door to more of these lawsuits, striking down a California law that required nonprofits to disclose their donors, siding with the Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s argument against disclosing their donors and providing IRS 990 forms to the state. Other legal challenges to campaign finance laws and unions have used the First Amendment.

Legal experts supportive of the SEC rule consider the argument a long shot in courts. “I think that argument is really far-fetched,” Emory’s Georgiev said.

But it’s still worrisome. If it succeeds, whether in courts or as a scare tactic to get the SEC to backtrack, it sets a dangerous precedent for the financial system at large. “If this climate rule is violating the First Amendment, it’s been all nine decades [the SEC has been] violating the First Amendment,” Georgiev said. “They will definitely try it out in courts. At the end of the day, a lot of far-fetched arguments succeed in courts.”

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20892344-comments-to-sec-on-esg-rule#document/p33/a2075289

comments from acc chem, AEI, AFP, API, cato, cei heartland etc CTT, CoC, co2 coalition, conoco phillips, enbridge, inst for free speech, heritage, nam, NMA, noia, lifepoerwed TPPF, WEA western energy? US oil and gas

Comments to SEC on ESG rule

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SOME TALK Talk:Grassroot Institute of Hawaii - Wikipedia

Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public policy think tank based in Honolulu, Hawaii.^[4]^ The organization's stated mission is to "educate people about the values of individual liberty, economic freedom, and accountable government."^[5]^ It promotes free market values and produces research on subjects like the Jones Act and pension issues. The current Chief Executive Officer is Dr. Keli'i Akina. The Institute was formed on February 12, 2001^[1]^ by Richard Rowland. The organization is a member of the State Policy Network, a conservative and libertarian network of state-based think tanks.

Issues

The Grassroot Institute has published commentary on a variety of political issues, from a legal minimum wage to Hawaiian sovereignty. The Grassroot Institute conducts research and analysis of various issues from a free market perspective. Academic works are inspired by the writings of scholars such as Frederic Bastiat, Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, and Adam Smith. Generally, the institute opposes tax increases, such as Hawaii's General Excise Tax.^[6]^

The Jones Act

The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii supports reform of the Jones Act that would address its disproportionate shipbuilding and cargo shipping restrictions effect on Hawaii.^[7]^

Honolulu rail project

The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii has been a vocal critic of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation's rail project in Honolulu. The Institute hasn't made any public comments on whether the rail should stop at Middle Street, which is a popular belief among opponents. The only official position of the Institute is that HART be subject to an independent audit for fraud, waste and abuse.^[8]^

In 2017, the Institute launched the campaign to audit the rail, which eventually gained momentum and resulted in a financial and management audit by Hawaii state auditor Les Kondo in 2018.^[9]^

Hawaiian sovereignty

The Grassroot Institute joined with other groups to file suit against the State of Hawaii's efforts to form and gain federal recognition of a race-based, sovereign nation. The lawsuit, filed in 2015, seeks to block state-funded race-based elections in Hawaii.^[10][11][12]^

References

• Hawaii portal
• Libertarianism portal
• Conservatism portal

1. The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, Inc." Hawaii Department of Commerce & Consumer Affairs. State of Hawaii. Accessed December 8, 2015.
2. Form 990: Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax". Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Guidestar. December 31, 2014. Accessed December 1, 2016.
3. "Grassroot Institute Of Hawaii Inc - Nonprofit Explorer". ProPublica. 9 May 2013. Retrieved 11 June 2025.
4. "Supreme Court justice blocks Native Hawaiian vote count". Chicago Tribune. Associated Press. November 27, 2015. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
5. "About Us". Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Archived from the original on 20 October 2018. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
6. Sterling Burnett, H. (July 31, 2015). "Study Suggest 'Regressive' Gas Tax Hike for Hawaiians". Heartland Institute. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
7. "Jones Act". Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
8. Hawaii, Grassroot Institute of (2019-01-11). "First part of HART audit is bad; will rest be worse?". Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Retrieved 2019-01-11.
9. "State Auditor Says Rail Agency Is Interfering With His Work". Honolulu Civil Beat. 2018-06-01. Retrieved 2019-01-11.
10. Blair, Chad (August 13, 2015). "Lawsuit Says Hawaiians-Only Election Is 'Racially Exclusive'". Honolulu Civil Beat. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
11. Essoyan, Susan (August 13, 2015). "Federal lawsuit filed to block Native Hawaiian election". Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
12. Daysog, Rick (February 1, 2016). "Na'i Aupuni kicks off amid heated talks". Hawaii News Now. Retrieved 7 September 2020.

External links

• Official website
• Organizational Profile Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine – National Center for Charitable Statistics (Urban Institute)
• Source Watch (Center for Media and Democracy)

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DCK 10 26

Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

https://www.grassrootinstitute.org

Hawaii Policy Research | Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii provides practical, best-practices policy research to promote individual liberty, economic freedom, and limited government in Hawaii.

About

The Grassroot Institute of Hawai'i is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, public-policy think tank that provides study, analysis, investigation and reporting in the service of educating people about the value of individual liberty, the free market and limited, accountable government.

Contribute

Increasing public awareness of laws that burden Hawaii, such as the Jones Act and zoning regulations. We have built this movement by challenging bad ideas with good ones, through research, public events, our weekly newsletter, social media and regular meetings with lawmakers at both the state and county levels.

Media

Akina: Act 11 forces advocacy groups to give up free speech rights Keli'i Akina, Ph.D. September 3, 2026 Read More → ⇦… ⇨

Events

Grassroot President Keli'i Akina will moderate. Together, they will discuss how lawmakers handled a litany of proposed tax hikes, state budget pressures and efforts to roll back regulations on housing, agriculture and healthcare.

Impact Fees

School Impact Fees What are school impact fees? School impact fees are charged on each new unit of housing that is constructed in certain districts across the state. Despite collecting over $5 million in school impact fees over 12 years, the Department of Education never used these funds for building new schools. School impact fees […]

Tod

Transit-Oriented Development What is transit-oriented development? Hawaii has long faced a housing shortage, creating urgent demands for sustainable urban development. Transit-oriented development zoning offers a solution by cutting through red tape and concentrating growth around transit hubs, such as the Honolulu rail system. With some slight tweaks to the current TOD zoning restrictions ...

Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

https://www.grassrootinstitute.org › 2026 › 06 › lawsuit-challenges-new-hawaii-law-that-would-silence-civic-advocacy

Lawsuit challenges new Hawaii law that would silence civic advocacy

The Institute for Free Speech has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Grassroot Institute to challenge Act 11, which stands to block the nonprofit's civic advocacy efforts Learn more: For the full case background, key documents, timeline and frequently asked questions, visit our Act 11 lawsuit resource page. HONOLULU, June 5, 2026 >> A sweeping new Hawaii law aims to silence the groups that ...

ifs.org

https://www.ifs.org › cases › grassroot-institute-of-hawaii-v-lopez-et-al

Grassroot Institute of Hawaii v. Lopez, et al. - Institute For Free Speech

Jun 5, 2026The lawsuit, Grassroot Institute of Hawaii v. Lopez, et al., seeks to protect the right of all Hawaii residents to join together and seek change. The lawsuit argues that Act 11 violates the First Amendment's protections of free speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press, and freedom of petition and assembly.

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Grassroot_Institute_of_Hawaii

Grassroot Institute of Hawaii - Wikipedia

The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit public policy think tank based in Honolulu, Hawaii. [4] The organization's stated mission is to "educate people about the values of individual liberty, economic freedom, and accountable government." [5] It promotes free market values and produces research on subjects like the Jones Act and pension issues. The current Chief Executive ...

indivisiblehawaii.org

https://indivisiblehawaii.org › resources › act-11-lawsuit-tracker

Act 11 lawsuit tracker: Where Hawaiʻi's challenge to Citizens United ...

6 days agoGrassroot Institute of Hawaii v. Lopez The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, represented by the Institute for Free Speech, sued on June 5, 2026. It asked the court for a preliminary injunction, an order that would pause Act 11 while the case is decided.

Ballotpedia

https://ballotpedia.org › Grassroot_Institute

Grassroot Institute - Ballotpedia

The Grassroot Institute is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit based in Honolulu, Hawaii that, according to its website, "seeks to educate people about the principles of individual liberty, economic freedom and limited, accountable government." [1] According to the institute's website, since its founding in 2001, the institute "has helped shape policy debate in Hawaii by providing practical, best ...

ifs.org

https://www.ifs.org › category-state › hawaii

Hawaii Archives - Institute For Free Speech

Jun 6, 2026Institute for Free Speech has filed suit on behalf of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii to challenge Act 11, which exposes organizations to severe ...

Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

https://www.grassrootinstitute.org › act-11-lawsuit-news

Act 11 Lawsuit Archives | Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

Jun 30, 2026The Institute for Free Speech has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Grassroot Institute to challenge Act 11, which stands to block the nonprofit's civic advocacy efforts Learn more: For the full case background, key documents, timeline and frequently asked questions, visit our Act 11 lawsuit resource page.

Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

https://www.grassrootinstitute.org › about

Our mission | Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

The Grassroot Institute of Hawai'i is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, public-policy think tank that provides study, analysis, investigation and reporting in the service of educating people about the value of individual liberty, the free market and limited, accountable government.

Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

https://www.grassrootinstitute.org › news

In the News - Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

Sep 22, 2026Owen Yeates, left, senior attorney for the Institute for Free Speech, is representing the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, led by Keli'i Akina, right, in a constitutional challenge to the state's new Act 11.

Generate answer for Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, represented by the Institute for Free Speech

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