Editorial: Corporations keep trying to throw out progressive California laws. Do we need reforms?
Editorial: Corporations keep trying to throw out progressive California laws. Do we need reforms?
“The state’s highest court threw out a regulation that would have allowed local agencies to require employers to disclose their political affiliations, ruling it violated the First Amendment rights of businesses and their workers.”
— California Supreme Court in a recent decision overturning a provision of Proposition 209, California’s 2008 initiative that prohibits government agencies from requiring businesses to reveal their political affiliations, or their spending in support of or against certain candidates. (Decision: Baun & Marlin, S.C., Sept. 25, 2017.)
“Proposition 209 is a crucial vote that should be given a chance to succeed,” says David Christopher, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, in an email. “Proposition 209 is also about freedom of association and how employees should be able to freely join and contribute to whatever organizations or causes they want.”
California’s largest companies have spent millions of dollars attacking and fighting to overturn Prop. 209 — spending $9 million on the campaign against, and more than $10 million to defend, it. They’ve taken aim at unions, the press, environmental organizations and many of the people it is supposed to protect. But corporate efforts to overturn Prop. 209 have so far failed to turn the tide in the state’s long campaign for marriage equality, as has Proposition 8 in Nevada.
Yet these efforts could be revived by two initiatives on California’s November ballot: Proposition 66, to restrict corporate spending in state elections, and Proposition 61, to limit the influence of money in state politics. The latter is supported by the Center for Individual Freedom, a group that calls itself “a constitutional amendment and citizen movement.” The group has previously tried to get Prop. 61 on the ballot but withdrew it after the campaign raised questions about the constitutionality of the measure. The organization says it will put Proposition 61 on the ballot again.
Meanwhile, the initiative the California Chamber of Commerce supports — which would bar localities from requiring businesses to disclose political spending — is being fought in court. The California secretary of state has asked the state�