This is the Kaderie Lake podcast for Thursday, October 19th,

2023, and Caleb Brown.

The Banta decision at the Supreme Court a few years ago

protected donors from disclosure merely for supporting

causes they care about, but how well are states falling in line with that mandate?

Luke Wachab is with People United for Privacy Foundation, he describes the many ways states have responded

either to follow or subvert the Bonta decision.

So for those who haven't been paying attention to the context of nonprofits and the degree to which

nonprofits may be compelled by governments to release their donor lists at least to the government itself.

There was a pretty big Supreme Court decision known as Banta

that secured the right of non-profits and indeed of donors to essentially remain private.

And the fallout from that case has been what in states or states either falling in line or not falling in line.

Yeah, this is one of the underrated but key free speech battles of our time.

You know, the First Amendment provides very strong protections to people's ability to speak out and oftentimes

when government wants to get in the way of that they look at donor disclosure, surveillance,

forcing groups to say you know who their members are who their donors

are and oftentimes publicizing that information and that really can can harassment on donors, it can scare away support for groups that are working on controversial or increasingly even mainstream policy issues, you know in today's world with the internet and social

media it's very easy to organize a mob to harass somebody online. So there's been an awakening of, you know, there's been a

realization that privacy is really important for people to actually be able to

exercise their First Amendment rights to support the causes they believe in.

In AFFPB Banta, that was a case where California had come out and required every nonprofit organization in the state to hand over its donor

lists.

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