In February 2024, a federal district court temporarily blocked an important law in Maine that would prohibit corporations substantially owned by foreign governments from spending money in Maine’s elections. The law was enacted via a ballot measure that passed with a historic margin of support from Maine voters. The district court’s decision overrules the public’s will and,  if not overturned on appeal, will allow foreign government-owned corporations to spend big in Maine’s future elections.

Maine’s ballot measure, passed by a resounding margin of 86% of voters in the Nov. 2023 election, prohibits corporations in which a foreign government holds at least a 5% stake from spending money in Maine’s state and local elections.

The district court’s ruling preliminarily enjoining this new law was based on the mistaken premise that Citizens United, a Supreme Court decision issued in 2010, broadly authorizes corporations based in the U.S. to spend unlimited money in Maine’s elections, regardless of who owns them. It does not. The Supreme Court in Citizens United held that corporations, which it defined as associations of citizens, can make independent expenditures in U.S. elections just as individual citizens can. But corporations substantially owned by foreign governments are not associations of citizens, and the Citizens United ruling is not a shield for those corporations to interfere with our elections.

Maine voters are well within their right to prohibit spending by corporations influenced by foreign government owners. Federal law has long prohibited foreign individuals, governments, and other entities from spending any money, either directly or indirectly, in U.S. elections.

In 2011, a year after the Citizens United ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard a case called Bluman v. FEC, in which then-Circuit Judge Kavanaugh upheld the federal ban, concluding that the United States has a compelling interest in protecting democratic self-government, and justified an absolute ban on spending by foreign entities in U.S. elections to prevent foreign influence over the U.S. political process. The Supreme Court swiftly affirmed that judgment.

Despite this law, foreign entities can and do spend money in U.S. elections. They do so through a backroad: namely, as shareholders of U.S. corporations that spend tremendously in U.S. elections to benefit the interests of their owners, including foreign entity owners, using resources that the common voter cannot hope to match.

This is not an uncommon or unlikely occurrence. Today, the default U.S. corporation is a multinational one. Nearly 40% of all equity in U.S. corporations comes from foreign investment, leaving businesses in America owned in significant part by shareholders spanning across the globe – shareholders that can include foreign governments (directly or through government-owned investment vehicles). These foreign entities’ investments or ownership stakes – which are often substantial and worth millions of dollars – influence the company’s decisions, including decisions about if and how to spend money in U.S. elections.

The ballot measure passed in Maine effectively puts an end to this pathway of influence by foreign government-owned corporations, something the state is constitutionally permitted to do. Maine has a compelling state interest in preventing these corporations from spending money to influence elections in order to protect and preserve Maine’s democratic self-government.

Maine’s interest in preserving its democratic self-government warrants the respect that courts have historically afforded it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit should overturn the district court, and affirm Maine’s ability to protect its elections from foreign government influence, even where that influence passes through U.S.-based corporations.