Amended in Assembly May 9, 2016

Amended in Assembly April 28, 2016

Amended in Assembly April 14, 2016

Amended in Assembly March 3, 2016

Amended in Senate June 2, 2015

Amended in Senate April 22, 2015

Senate Bill No. 254

Introduced by Senators Allen and Leno

(Principal coauthors: Senators Hancock, Jackson, Monning, and Wieckowski)

(Coauthors: Assembly Members Bloom, Dababneh, Cristina Garcia, Gonzalez, and Williams)

February 18, 2015

An act to submit to the voters a voter instruction relating to campaign finance, calling an election, to take effect immediately.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

SB 254, as amended, Allen. Campaign finance: voter instruction.

This bill would call a special election to be consolidated with the November 8, 2016, statewide general election. The bill would require the Secretary of State to submit to the voters at the November 8, 2016, consolidated election a voter instruction asking whether California’s elected officials should use all of their constitutional authority, including proposing and ratifying one or more amendments to the United States Constitution, to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) 558 U.S. 310, and other applicable judicial precedents, as specified. The bill would require the Secretary of State to communicate the results of this election to the Congress of the United States. The bill would require the Secretary of State, if prohibited by court order from submitting the voter instruction to the voters at the November 8, 2016, statewide general election, as specified, to submit the voter instruction to the voters at the next occurring election.

This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an act calling an election.

Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: yes. State-mandated local program: no.

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1.  

This act shall be known and may be cited as the Overturn Citizens United Act.

SEC. 2.  

The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) The United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights are
intended to protect the rights of individual human beings.

(b) Corporations are not mentioned in the United States
Constitution, nor have we decreed that corporations have rights
separate from “We the People.”

(c) In Connecticut General Life Insurance Company v. Johnson
(1938) 303 U.S. 77, United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo
Black stated in his dissent, “I do not believe the word ‘person’ in
the Fourteenth Amendment includes corporations.”

(d) In Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) 494
U.S. 652, the United States Supreme Court recognized the threat
to a republican form of government posed by “the corrosive and
distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are
accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have
little or no correlation to the public’s support for the corporation’s
political ideas.”

(e) In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010)
558 U.S. 310, the United States Supreme Court struck down limits
on electioneering communications that were upheld in McConnell
v. Federal Election Commission (2003) 540 U.S. 93 and Austin
v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. This decision presents a
serious threat to self-government by rolling back previous bans
on corporate spending in the electoral process and allows unlimited
corporate spending to influence elections, candidate selection,
policy decisions, and public debate.

(f) In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Justices
John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and
Sonia Sotomayor noted in their dissent that corporations have
special advantages not enjoyed by natural persons, such as limited
liability, perpetual life, and favorable treatment of the accumulation
and distribution of assets, that allow them to spend huge sums on
campaign messages that have little or no correlation with the beliefs
held by natural persons.

(g) Corporations have used the artificial rights bestowed on
them by the courts to overturn democratically enacted laws that
municipal, state, and federal governments passed to curb corporate
abuses, thereby impairing local governments’ ability to protect
their citizens against corporate harms to the environment,
consumers, workers, independent businesses, and local and regional
economies.

(h) In Buckley v. Valeo (1976) 424 U.S. 1, the United States
Supreme Court held that the appearance of corruption justified
some contribution limitations, but it wrongly rejected other
fundamental interests that the citizens of California find
compelling, such as creating a level playing field and ensuring that
all citizens, regardless of wealth, have an opportunity to have their
political views heard.

(i) In First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978) 435 U.S.
765 and Citizens Against Rent Control/Coalition for Fair Housing
v. City of Berkeley (1981) 454 U.S. 290, the United States Supreme
Court rejected limits on contributions to ballot measure campaigns
because it concluded that these contributions posed no threat of
candidate corruption.

(j) In Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC (2000) 528
U.S. 377, United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens
observed in his concurrence that “money is property; it is not
speech.”

(k) A February 2010 Washington Post-ABC News poll found
that 80 percent of Americans oppose the ruling in Citizens United.

(l) Article V of the United States Constitution empowers and
obligates the people of the United States of America to use the
constitutional amendment process to correct those egregiously
wrong decisions of the United States Supreme Court that go to the
heart of our democracy and the republican form of self-government.

(m) Article I of the California Constitution guarantees the right
of the people to instruct their representatives, petition government
for redress of grievances, and assemble freely to consult for the
common good.

(n) The people of California and of the United States have
previously used ballot measures as a way of instructing their elected
representatives about the express actions they want to see them
take on their behalf, including provisions to amend the United
States Constitution.

(o) California’s United States Senators and Representatives
would benefit from having instructions from California voters
about the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United
and other judicial precedents in taking congressional action.

SEC. 3.  

A special election is hereby called to be held
throughout the state on November 8, 2016. The special election
shall be consolidated with the statewide general election to be held
on that date. The consolidated election shall be held and conducted
in all respects as if there were only one election and only one form
of ballot shall be used.

SEC. 4.  

(a) Notwithstanding Section 9040 of the Elections
Code, the Secretary of State shall submit the following voter
instruction to the voters at the November 8, 2016, consolidated
election:

“Shall California’s elected officials use all of their constitutional
authority, including, but not limited to, proposing and ratifying
one or more amendments to the United States Constitution, to
overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010)
558 U.S. 310, and other applicable judicial precedents, to allow
the full regulation or limitation of campaign contributions and
spending, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of wealth, may
express their views to one another, and to make clear that
corporations should not have the begin insert same end insert constitutional rights begin delete of end delete begin insert as end insert
human beings?”

(b) Upon certification of the election, the Secretary of State
shall communicate to the Congress of the United States the results
of the election asking the question set forth in subdivision (a).

(c) The provisions of the Elections Code that apply to the
preparation of ballot measures and ballot materials at a statewide
election apply to the measure submitted pursuant to this section.

SEC. 5.  

(a) Notwithstanding the requirements of Sections
9040, 9043, 9044, 9061, 9082, and 9094 of the Elections Code or
any other law, the Secretary of State shall submit Section 4 of this
act to the voters at the November 8, 2016, statewide general
election.

(b) Notwithstanding Section 13115 of the Elections Code,
Section 4 of this act and any other measure placed on the ballot
by the Legislature for the November 8, 2016, statewide general
election after the 131-day deadline set forth in Section 9040 of the
Elections Code shall be placed on the ballot, following all other
ballot measures, in the order in which they qualified as determined
by chapter number.

(c) The Secretary of State shall include, in the ballot pamphlets
mailed pursuant to Section 9094 of the Elections Code, the
information specified in Section 9084 of the Elections Code
regarding the ballot measure contained in Section 4 of this act.

SEC. 6.  

If the Secretary of State is prohibited from complying
with Sections 4 and 5 of this act until after November 8, 2016, by
court order pending resolution of an unsuccessful legal challenge
to the validity of this act, then the Secretary of State shall submit
Section 4 of this act to the voters at the next occurring election.

SEC. 7.  

This act calls an election within the meaning of Article
IV of the Constitution and shall go into immediate effect.