In a huge victory for Arizonans, Campaign Legal Center, our local Arizona partners, and for the fight against dark money in our elections, the Arizona Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 211 (Prop 211), or the Voters’ Right to Know Act.
Campaign Legal Center’s campaign finance experts began working with former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard and Voters’ Right to Know, the political action committee formed to support Prop 211, to craft this one-of-a-kind disclosure law in 2017. Campaign Legal Center Action has been defending it in court since 2022, when Arizona voters approved the ballot measure by an overwhelming majority.
This latest court decision reaffirms a key guardrail for our elections — that voters have a constitutional right to know who is spending massive amounts of money to influence their vote — and is a promising step forward in the ongoing legal effort to combat the deluge of secret spending that continues to grow with each election cycle.
What is Prop 211?
Prop 211 strengthens democracy in Arizona by increasing transparency and ending the ability of special interests to spend vast sums of money on campaign media in support of their preferred candidates without disclosing the original sources of those funds.
Protecting democracy requires educating voters with the information they need to evaluate candidates for public office and to hold them accountable once they’re elected.
But when wealthy special interests outspend everyone else to elect the candidates of their choosing — and use shell-corporations, multiple intermediaries, or ambiguously named outside groups to do so — the power of the people quickly becomes secondary to the power of dark money.
Before the passage of Prop 211, Arizona’s existing campaign finance disclosure system was described as “one of the most pro-dark-money statutes imaginable.” Voters rejected that history in 2022, however, when they approved Prop 211 with an overwhelming 72% of voters in support.
Now, any group that spends more than $50,000 on Arizona statewide campaigns — or $25,000 on non-statewide campaigns — on political media advertising and related spending will be required to keep track of the large donations it receives and to disclose the original sources of donations exceeding $5,000.
How we have defended Prop 211 in court.
Within months of passage, powerful special interests and supporters of dark money filed three lawsuits to challenge the constitutionality of Prop 211.
In the first case, the Center for Arizona Policy, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, and two anonymous plaintiffs filed suit against the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission (CCEC) and the Arizona secretary of state, arguing that the new traceback disclosure and disclaimer provisions violated their rights under the Arizona state constitution, including their right to free speech and conducting private affairs.
CLC Action represents Voters’ Right to Know, the committee originally formed to create and support the initiative, which successfully intervened in the suit to defend Prop 211. Alongside the CCEC, the Arizona secretary of state and the Arizona attorney general, CLC Action argued that disclosure and disclaimer laws were constitutionally guaranteed transparency measures that protect citizens’ right to be informed voters.
The courts agreed. In June 2023, the Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County, upheld the law. Plaintiffs continued their legal fight to overturn the law, appealing to the Arizona Court of Appeals and then the Arizona State Supreme Court.
What does this ruling mean for disclosure laws in Arizona?
Three years after this initial challenge, and nine years after CLC first set out to design a new kind of disclosure law that could bring greater transparency to a post-Citizens United landscape, the Arizona State Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s decision and rejected the plaintiffs’ broad claim that Prop 211 needs to be entirely struck down.
Arizonans’ right to know the true sources of money trying to influence their votes has thus been vindicated under their own constitution.
As laid out in the majority opinion, donations by wealthy special interests used to fund campaign ads or expressly advocate for a political cause are not private affairs protected from disclosure laws.
While these donations are in some sense a form of speech, two of the underlying principles for the protection of free speech are to educate voters and to curb corruption.
As the Court also explained, the Arizona Constitution includes certain requirements to disclose campaign contributions, and its general protection of free speech does not preclude contribution disclosure laws like Prop 211.
While the Arizona Supreme Court did allow one narrow aspect of the plaintiffs’ challenges to be considered by the lower court — whether or not these particular plaintiffs can prove that the threat of harassment for their donations may “chill” their constitutional right to free speech and thus qualify them for an exemption — this opinion is a resounding victory for transparency and voters’ right to know who is influencing their vote.
Prop 211 is a carefully crafted, legally sound, voter-oriented law that has survived many attempts by wealthy special interests to overturn it. Looking forward, this careful review and explanation of the law’s constitutional basis by Arizona’s State Supreme Court will serve as an important precedent to encourage other states to implement campaign finance laws that curb the influence of dark money in elections.
Campaign Legal Center has been a part of this fight for decades. The success of our pioneering legal strategy in Arizona demonstrates how partnerships between legal experts, local advocates and voters themselves are a fundamental piece of the puzzle when it comes to protecting Americans’ right to a representative democracy.
For more information on the history that led to this decision, read our full explainer on the ideation, implementation and defense of Prop 211. To support the legal effort to reform campaign finance laws across the U.S., join us today.