Everything old is new again. The Democratic Party’s 2024 platform calls for the muzzling of groups of Americans who refuse to sacrifice their privacy when exercising their First Amendment right to voice opinions about elected officials. 

“Democrats will end ‘dark money’ by requiring full disclosure of contributors and ban 501(c)(4) organizations from spending on elections,” the platform vows. The term “501(c)(4)” is a reference to a section of the federal tax code regulating advocacy nonprofits – organizations like the ACLU, NRA, Human Rights Campaign, and National Right to Life Committee, among countless others.

The platform bemoans that these groups “can run ads on issues attacking or supporting a candidate right until Election Day without disclosing who’s paying for that ad.” Inaccurate at best, this claim ignores that ads discussing federal candidates near an election must include disclaimers identifying the entity sponsoring the communication. 

What the Democratic Party’s platform actually opposes is the speaker not being forced to publicly expose the sensitive personal information of their members and supporters – their names, home addresses, occupations, and employers. That is for good reason. While donors to candidates, political parties, and super PACs are publicly disclosed, supporters of nonprofit advocacy groups have historically remained private because these groups exist to speak about policy issues rather than elections. As a result, Americans have the right to support the causes they value without having the government collect and publish information on their beliefs and associations. That could change, however, under the policies endorsed in the Democratic platform.

Adding weight to the threat, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer promised that anti-privacy legislation will be a top priority for Democrats if they win control of Congress and the White House. “One of the first things we want to do is what we did first last time, but I think we’ll have more success, and that’s democracy – dealing with voting rights, dealing with Citizens United, dealing with reapportionment,” Schumer pledged.

For more than a decade, Democratic proposals on these topics have consistently featured the DISCLOSE Act. This legislation would force nonprofit advocacy groups to choose between self-censorship or exposing their members to harassment when speaking about candidates for office, including current elected officials. Originally introduced in 2010, DISCLOSE was Senate Democrats’ signature response to Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision which restored the First Amendment rights of nonprofits, businesses, and labor unions to independently voice their support or opposition to candidates for office. (These groups are still banned from contributing to candidates, however.)

Through the DISCLOSE Act, Senators aim to scare these groups back into silence. As Schumer boasted at the time, the “deterrent effect” of forcing nonprofits to risk disclosing their supporters’ identities “should not be underestimated.” In other words, if the Supreme Court would not allow Congress to explicitly censor nonprofits and businesses, then Congress would facilitate their being bullied into silence by exposing their members and donors to potential threats, boycotts, harassment, and intimidation.

Republican opposition has doomed the DISCLOSE Act each time it was proposed, but Democrats have never stopped including the bill in priority legislation. When Democrats reclaimed the House of Representatives in 2018, they included DISCLOSE as part of H.R. 1, a massive package of seismic changes to elections, voting, and campaign finance law. DISCLOSE later reappeared in Congressional Democrats’ deceptively named “Freedom to Vote Act.”

Opposition to the DISCLOSE Act from the nonprofit community has been bipartisan. The ACLU explained how DISCLOSE would harm free speech and limit debate on important policy issues in a letter to Congress in 2019:

“Consider, for example, a California-based organization placing an ad describing a ‘crisis at the Southern border’ and criticizing Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) for failing to support President Trump’s efforts to build a wall. That organization might then have to disclose all of its donors that gave above a certain amount of money because the ad ‘opposes’ Senator Harris’ positions, and, therefore, it may be found to ‘oppose’ her election.

Or consider a different ad from a different organization describing immigration as the life blood of the United States and extolling Sen. Harris’ refusal to support building a wall. The problem is the same. Both of these organizations are expressing their opinion about immigration. The DISCLOSE Act could treat them as though they are expressing their opinions about the election of Sen. Harris.”

People United for Privacy has long upheld the maxim that ‘transparency is for government, privacy is for people.’ DISCLOSE violates that principle by invading the privacy of groups of Americans who are promoting ideas, not candidates. Americans have a First Amendment right to contribute to discussions about policy issues without sacrificing their privacy and inviting public scrutiny or worse.

The Democratic platform extols that “Trust in democracy is critical to protecting democracy.” Yet, degrading the First Amendment rights and privacy of Americans who support nonprofit groups of varying beliefs will only damage trust in our system of government. The DISCLOSE Act’s return to the main stage is a worrying sign for the future of free speech in America.