Chad Blair writing for Honolulu Civil Beat, earlier this month:

Few decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court have had a greater impact on the nation’s political landscape than the 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The 5–4 decision allowed corporations and other outside groups including labor unions to spend unlimited money on elections. […]

But what if the states took the initiative to limit the impact of Citizens United by passing their own laws to change the way corporations are defined?

That is the purpose of Senate Bill 2471, which would emphasize that corporations are “artificial persons” created by state law and granted powers and privileges by it — something SB 2471 points out is already part of Hawaiʻi’s constitution.

The bill would make clear that the powers of corporations do not include spending money or contributing “anything of value” to influence elections or ballot measures, as the bill’s language explains.

Corporations exist because states define the rules of their existence. In theory, that should mean corporations have only the rights granted to them by the states—and states therefore can redefine, or eliminate, those rights.

While the law targets the “dark money” unleashed by Citizens United, should it pass and survive the inevitable legal challenges (which I hope it does, as corporations do not have the right to vote and therefore should not wield such tremendous power over our elections), a similarly innovative approach could be used to redefine all manner of corporate “personhood” issues—including making their top officers legally and morally responsible for corporate malfeasance.

Hawaiʻi is the first state to attempt this novel maneuver, but it’s not the only one considering it:

[…] legislation based on this framework has now been introduced in 13 states besides Hawaiʻi: Arizona, California, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

That’s a surprisingly bipartisan bloc potentially uniting against Citizens United.