First Amendment victories at the Supreme Court are often ushered in with bold proclamations. “Austin is overruled,” from the oft-mischaracterized decision in Citizens United v. FEC. “We hold that the immunity from state scrutiny of membership lists . . . is here so related to the right of the members to pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others in so doing as to come within the protection of the [Constitution],” as the landmark NAACP v. Alabama opinion articulated.

That’s the language of big, epochal wins. But the process of securing the liberties protected by the First Amendment isn’t limited to Supreme Court caselaw or sweeping prose. In the day-to-day grind of state legislatures, some of the most significant victories are heralded by some of the most innocuous phrases. Take just two words that marked a defeat for a serious effort to short-circuit donor privacy in Alabama: “Indefinitely postponed.” That phrase spelled the quiet death of S.B. 220, an aggressive anti-privacy measure that snuck its way out of committee in the State Senate this legislative session.

As People United for Privacy Foundation’s (PUFPF) analysis demonstrated, S.B. 220 would have been a disaster for donor privacy, freedom of association, and civil society throughout Alabama. If enacted, it would have banned certain nonprofits – namely, 501(c)(3) think tanks and 501(c)(4) advocacy organizations – from talking about candidates if they used general treasury funds. It would have further imposed onerous registration and reporting requirements on those groups that sought to comply with the scheme by mandating the creation of a separate account to pay for political speech. As usual with these kinds of measures, what the law actually prohibited was unclear – vague, weasel wording made it “impossible to determine what conduct is even [truly] regulated.”

As PUFPF’s analysis concluded: “S.B. 220 purports to be aimed at preventing campaign donors from masking their identities by routing their contributions through intermediaries. However, Alabama law already prohibits this practice. The state should enforce the pre-existing law instead of enacting sweeping new restrictions that would unconstitutionally hinder nonprofit organizations’ ability to engage in protected political speech – while sacrificing their supporters’ privacy – in The Yellowhammer State.”

What might be surprising to some is that this bill, which sounds like the wish list of the same campaign finance regulators that tried to muscle the Orwellian “For the People Act” through a Democratic Congress, was promoted by veteran State Senator Arthur Orr (R) and passed out of a lopsidedly GOP-dominated committee before cooler heads prevailed. As Sen. Orr put it, “[t]he public has the right to know” the identities of nonprofit donors. That’s a compelling, albeit chilling, reminder that, while threats to First Amendment speech and association from campaign finance laws are often (ahem) associated with Democrats, no party has a monopoly on constitutional virtue when it comes to agitating to expose donors to “disfavored” voices. After all, the GOP nominated John McCain – proud sponsor of the biggest campaign finance-censorship measure since 1974 – as its nominee in 2008, and in recent years Republicans and the Trump administration have applied increasing scrutiny to donor networks supporting progressive and left-leaning causes.

As James Madison aptly noted, men aren’t angels. The Constitution doesn’t expect them to be either – which is why the First Amendment fences politicians in. But the First Amendment carries value in the long-run only if there’s a critical mass of Americans that take it seriously at the nation’s ballot boxes, legislative cloakrooms, and judicial chambers. As Professor Akhil Reed Amar has argued, the Bill of Rights was written for every American’s heart – to “educate Americans” and to “crystallize [constitutional] principles so that they could be memorialized and internalized—much like Scripture—by ordinary citizens.”

PUFPF continues that mission today, urging voters and lawmakers alike to listen to and understand the meaning of the lyrics in the “cadence of our [constitutional] rights.” At least, that’s what PUFPF did in response to S.B. 220 – and we think that work (and the work of our allies and partners) made the difference in tearing this anti-privacy measure off a glide path to passage.

“Indefinitely postponed.” It doesn’t ring quite as well as “shall make no law” – but Alabamians and the state’s nonprofit community will take it.