A bipartisan team of former Montana officials have unveiled an oddly simple yet startlingly robust legal mechanism for undoing Citizens United that pares back the list of corporate powers granted by state corporation law. They have drafted a constitutional initiative (text here) and are steering it toward Montana’s 2026 ballot.

Ever since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, America has been told that only the Court or a constitutional amendment could stem corporate and dark money in politics. Not so.

Citizens United (558 U.S. 310) held that lawmakers cannot regulate a corporation’s right to spend independently in elections. But regulations are just one tool in the legislative toolbox. Another extraordinarily powerful tool has gone largely unexamined until now: every state’s virtually unlimited authority to define the powers it grants its corporations.

Corporations have only the powers that states give them—no more. States stopped being choosy about the powers they granted to their corporations in the mid-1800s. But every single state retained the authority to be as choosy as they like. Every single state retains the authority to decide to no longer grant its corporations the power to spend in politics.

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