Continuing a disturbing trend we’ve documented in 2023, 2024, and 2025, the Virginia General Assembly’s 2026 session saw a multitude of bills that showcased the latest legislative schemes to violate the privacy of nonprofits’ supporters and hinder civic engagement. And, once again, each of these threats to freedom of association suffered a stinging defeat.

Instead of learning from the repeated failure of bills with similar aims, some Virginia lawmakers proposed even more extreme attacks on speech and privacy rights in 2026. Several were explicitly in violation of established First Amendment precedent.

For example, Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D) introduced a truly radical bill, S.B. 688, that would have made it “unlawful for any person that is not an individual to make any contribution or expenditure” in Virginia campaigns. Ostensibly aimed at “business entities,” the existing definition of “person” in Virginia’s campaign finance statute exposes the true impact of this ban on First Amendment-protected activity. While limiting the prohibition to for-profit corporations and businesses would still be blatantly unconstitutional, the bill’s use of “any person” went far beyond the supposed targets by also applying the ban to any “labor organization, membership organization, [or] association.” As articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC (2010), the First Amendment does not permit government to ban corporations, labors unions, or nonprofits from spending money directly on political speech or from contributing to groups that make political expenditures independently of candidates.

S.B. 688 also included campaign expenditure limits, which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as “direct and substantial restraints on the quantity of political speech” in its 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision. Additionally, the bill proposed aggregate contribution limits on overall political giving in direct violation of the Court’s 2014 McCutcheon v. FEC ruling.

Majority Leader Surovell was apparently well aware of the unconstitutionally of his proposed speech restrictions. Implementation was conditioned on a certification from the Attorney General that “it is reasonably probable to be upheld as constitutional due to (i) an opinion by the United States Supreme Court; (ii) the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution of the United States; or (iii) any other reason, to be specified in the certification.” Furthermore, the bill’s findings expressed Surovell’s opinion that Citizens United, McCutcheon, “and other related campaign finance cases are wrongly decided.”

After narrowly passing the Senate in a 21-19 vote, the House passed a substitute version that included only the bill’s (misguided) findings and directed the Clerk of the Senate to transmit those sentiments to Congress. Unwilling to accept the removal of his unconstitutional, conditional wish list, Surovell forced the bill into a conference committee, where it died unceremoniously upon adjournment.

In another display of contempt for First Amendment caselaw protecting freedom of association, Delegate Jackie H. Glass (D) introduced her own version of the Center for American Progress-devised scheme “to undo Citizens United by using state corporate law authority to stop granting political spending powers to corporations and dark money nonprofits.” First unveiled as a Montana ballot initiative campaign, these “Montana Plan”-style bills have alarmingly been introduced in states across the country in 2026.

Like the others, Delegate Glass’s H.B. 1447 sought to specifically strip incorporated entities operating in the state, including nonprofits, of “the power to directly or indirectly engage in election activity or ballot-issue activity.” Seemingly straying from the far-fetched theory that a state’s authority to grant corporate powers “bypasses” Citizens United, the bill also would’ve prohibited “unincorporated associations” from speaking about elections or ballot issues.

Fortunately, H.B. 1447 died upon adjournment without ever receiving a hearing in its committee of referral. This chilly reception hopefully indicates that most House lawmakers did not take the proposal seriously, but there’s clearly a serious national effort to introduce this scheme in as many states as possible. Whether or not it reappears in Virginia next year, this desperate plot to circumvent the First Amendment is unlikely to disappear any time soon.

Under both H.B. 1447 and the Senate-passed version of S.B. 688, the only option for evading the proposed speech bans would be to form a separate “political committee” or PAC and solicit donations from individuals willing to sacrifice their personal privacy.

As the Court noted in Citizens United, “the option to form PACs does not alleviate the First Amendment problems with [a ban on corporate/nonprofit speech]. PACs are burdensome alternatives; they are expensive to administer and subject to extensive regulations. For example, every PAC must appoint a treasurer, forward donations to the treasurer promptly, [and] keep detailed records of the identities of the persons making donations…”

In addition to new schemes designed to strip nonprofits and businesses of their First Amendment rights, familiar legislation meant to undermine the Citizens United decision was also introduced in Virginia in 2026. S.B. 584, from Senator Saddam Azlan Salim (D), would’ve defined a “foreign-influenced corporation” (FIC) as any company with as little as 1% of its equity owned by a foreign investor or 5% owned, in aggregate, by multiple foreign investors. Of course, many American businesses meet this sweeping definition and would be prohibited from participating, directly or indirectly, in a wide range of public communications about government and public policy.

What’s less understood is that nonprofits that receive corporate donations and trade associations that collect membership dues from businesses would also face significant constraints on their speech and privacy rights under these proposals. Nonprofits may trigger the ban on First Amendment-protected activity as a consequence of accepting funds from so-called FICs or simply as a result of being unable to verify that their donors are not FICs. Relatedly, enforcement of the certification requirement and/or ban on contributions and expenditures could ultimately function as a de facto donor disclosure requirement for nonprofits engaging in regulated activity.

Fortunately, S.B. 584 failed to pass out of the Senate Privileges and Elections committee in a deadlocked (7-7) vote. The bill’s failure not only preserved the First Amendment rights of Virginia businesses and nonprofits, it also saved the state from being forced to defend an unconstitutional law in court – a costly lesson that Maine and Minnesota have now learned.

Finally, Virginia Democrats attempted once again to regulate nonprofit issue speech via bills purporting to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). One common way that lawmakers seek to expand donor disclosure requirements beyond election campaign funding is through the regulation of so-called “electioneering communications.” This term generally refers to ads aired close to an election that mention a candidate, usually a sitting lawmaker, but do not urge voters to vote for or against the candidate.

2025 saw the birth of a phenomenon in which legislation imposing disclaimer requirements on communications using AI was exploited as a vehicle to sneak new “electioneering communication” regulations into law. Last year, Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed two such bills due to “significant constitutional and logistical concerns,” along with the potential for “politically motivated legal actions and inconsistent enforcement.”

In 2026, lawmakers introduced three bills – H.B. 868, S.B. 141, and H.B. 982 – employing this backdoor strategy to insert “electioneering communication” regulations into Virginia law. Not one of them made it to now-Governor Abigail Spanberger’s (D) desk. Considering a Republican governor’s veto was necessary to prevent their predecessors from becoming law in 2025, perhaps the failure of these bills in the General Assembly in 2026 shows Democratic lawmakers are listening to nonprofits’ First Amendment concerns. Indeed, the sustained opposition and educational efforts of a cross-ideological coalition of nonprofits that included the ACLU, Americans for Prosperity, and FIRE deserve much of the credit for preventing this legislation from reaching the desk of a governor presumably less likely to use her veto power.

For those keeping tabs on recurring and novel threats to nonprofit civic engagement and donor privacy, the Virginia General Assembly annually serves up the worst of the worst. That said, the repeated failures of those who have made it their mission to undermine fundamental First Amendment freedoms in the Commonwealth is cause for celebration.