My colleague Alex Baiocco recently did a deep dive  into state laws purporting to ban political and issue spending by so-called “foreign-influenced corporations” (FIC). The short version: Despite their name, FIC laws primarily target the First Amendment rights of Americans by censoring U.S. companies that have miniscule foreign ownership – typically defined as 1% held by any foreign entity or 5% by all foreign entities – and further censoring U.S. nonprofits that are unable to verify that all of their corporate donors are not FICs. You can read more about FIC laws and why they have been repeatedly struck down in the courts here.

FIC laws are not new, but they have gained some momentum in state legislatures in recent years. That raises two obvious questions: Where did these schemes come from? And why are we seeing more of them now?

The answers take us back to Citizens United v. FEC, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that struck down the federal government’s censorship of corporations and nonprofits in elections. That ruling, while hard to argue with on the facts of the case – the Federal Election Commission tried to ban a 2008 documentary film criticizing then-candidate Hillary Clinton from being aired or advertised – was nevertheless controversial with elected officials, who are not keen on groups of Americans taking to the airwaves to criticize their records. Shortly thereafter, President Obama used part of his State of the Union Address to accuse Citizens United of allowing “foreign corporations to spend without limit in our elections.” Justice Samuel Alito spoke for many conservatives when he mouthed “not true” in response.

That moment set the terms for the debate that would ultimately culminate in today’s FIC bills. Ever since 2010, opponents of political and issue advocacy by businesses and nonprofits have hyped up any and all fears of foreign meddling in American politics and elections to try to undermine Citizens United. In the politics of the Obama years, that usually meant Democrats in Congress and the White House agitating for new laws and investigations aimed at censoring and exposing donors to conservative and Tea Party groups. Republicans fiercely opposed these efforts as a partisan campaign to defy the Supreme Court and silence Americans who criticized the administration.

When Donald Trump shocked the political establishment by defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016, some Democrats once again blamed foreign influence. This time, we saw a wave of bills attempting to censor political speech on the internet under the guise of preventing Vladimir Putin from swaying American elections with poorly produced Facebook ads. Once again, Republicans largely opposed these efforts as hysterical, partisan, and antithetical to free speech.

Another thing happened in 2016: Longtime Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub pitched the idea for FIC laws in a New York Times op-ed. Unlike savvier officials, Weintraub was open about who she aimed to silence: American companies. Rather than present FIC laws as a matter of national security, she introduced them as a way “to blunt the impact of the [Citizens United] decision that gave corporations the right to spend unlimited sums of money on federal elections.”

Not foreign corporations. Just corporations. The focus on “foreign-influenced” corporations was only a means to an end. That, in itself, is telling: While often derided as lacking, federal laws against foreign involvement in political campaigns are actually so clear and so strict that critics of Citizens United saw them as their best angle of attack against the decision.

Weintraub went on to speculate that “most publicly traded corporations probably could not” meet her proposed standard of requiring companies to verify that all shareholders are not foreigners at the time an expenditure is made. Silencing virtually every publicly traded corporation was not some unfortunate side effect of FIC laws, it was the animating reason they were conceived.

The reason FIC bills have recently picked up steam is just as political as their origins. The 2020s have seen a growing number of Republicans willing to jeopardize longstanding protections for nonprofit advocacy to pursue progressive organizations and their donors. These efforts accelerated after pro-abortion rights groups successfully passed several major ballot initiatives in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.  Today, we often see FIC bills with Republican sponsors or cosponsors.

At a recent House Ways and Means Committee hearing, one Republican witness went so far as to endorse the DISCLOSE Act, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s notorious scheme to publicly dox nonprofit donors. Somewhere, Senator Chuck Schumer must have been smiling: The Democrats’ Senate Leader has spent 16 years fantasizing about passing the DISCLOSE Act in order to “deter” companies and wealthy individuals from supporting conservative causes.

Seeing Republican lawmakers do the bidding of President Obama and Chuck Schumer can be a surreal sight. But it’s just another reminder of what People United for Privacy Foundation has always known: Free speech and donor privacy are not partisan issues. Every American has a vested interest in preserving these freedoms so that we can always freely exercise our First Amendment right to participate in political and policy debates, no matter who holds power.

Every would-be censor eventually discovers the potential of exploiting laws against foreign election meddling to target their domestic political opponents. For that reason, proposals like FIC bans warrant careful inspection. Upon a closer look, you’ll soon realize that you’re actually looking at a scheme to destroy a cornerstone First Amendment precedent while silencing American citizens in the process.