What the ruling actually did
Citizens United v. FEC is a 2010 Supreme Court decision (558 U.S. 310, decided 5–4) that struck down limits on how much corporations and unions could spend on political speech, so long as that spending is "independent" — not coordinated with a candidate or campaign. Before 2010, corporations and unions were barred from using their general treasury funds for this kind of election spending. The Court ruled that barring it violated the First Amendment, treating independent political spending as a form of protected speech that can't be limited based on who's speaking.
It's worth being precise about what it didn't do: it didn't allow corporations to donate directly to candidates (that's still capped and separate), and it didn't create Super PACs by itself.
How it actually created Super PACs
Super PACs exist because of a second, less-famous case: SpeechNow.org v. FEC, decided by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals a few months after Citizens United. That court reasoned that if independent spending can't be limited (Citizens United's holding), then contribution limits on groups that only make independent expenditures don't make sense either. That's the case that actually created the modern Super PAC: a committee that can raise unlimited money from individuals, corporations, and unions alike, as long as it doesn't coordinate with a candidate.
We are a Super PAC. We exist because of the exact legal architecture we're asking you to help us dismantle. We think that's worth saying plainly rather than glossing over.
Why we think it's bad
Our argument isn't that corporations or unions should have zero voice — it's about scale and transparency. A handful of billionaires or corporations can now outspend the combined political giving of millions of ordinary Americans, funneled through vehicles (including groups like ours) that don't always have to disclose where the money originally came from. That has three practical effects we think are corrosive regardless of party: it lets a small number of wealthy donors set the agenda for both parties, it creates a direct financial incentive for elected officials to prioritize donors over constituents, and it drowns out the kind of small-dollar, broad-based participation that's supposed to be what democracy runs on.
The other side, briefly
The ruling's defenders make a consistent argument: political spending is a form of speech (this goes back to Buckley v. Valeo, 1976), and the First Amendment doesn't let the government decide that some speakers — including incorporated associations of people, whether a corporation, a union, or a nonprofit advocacy group — have less right to speak than others. Restricting spending, in this view, is restricting speech, and the cure for bad or unbalanced speech is more speech, not censorship. We disagree with where that argument lands in practice, but it's not a frivolous position, and reasonable people hold it.
What "laying the groundwork" actually means in 2026
We're not going to promise you Citizens United gets overturned this year. It doesn't. Full reversal realistically takes one of two paths: a constitutional amendment (currently nowhere close to the votes needed), or a new Supreme Court ruling built on a decades-long judicial strategy, the same order of magnitude project that produced Dobbs v. Jackson in 2022 for a different issue. Neither happens in a single election cycle.
What's realistic this year is groundwork: supporting the DISCLOSE Act of 2026's donor-transparency requirements, backing state-level reforms that blunt the ruling's effects without needing the Supreme Court to act, and building the coalition that can sustain a multi-year effort instead of losing steam after one election. See our Agenda for the specific, real legislative vehicles we're pushing right now.
If you think this fight is worth having honestly, even if it takes longer than one election, sign the petition.