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Issue Advocacy: A Cornerstone of Democracy
January 1, 2018  •  By IFS Staff  •    •  

The First Amendment protects speech from burdensome government regulation. Until the 1970s, federal law largely did not regulate either campaign speech or issue speech by advocacy groups. That changed with the adoption of the Federal Election Campaign Act. The Act attempted to regulate any speech “relative to a clearly identified candidate.” This law, and the subsequent Supreme Court decision Buckley…

Why disclosing ‘dark money’ donations actually hurts your freedom of speech
January 24, 2023   •  By Alec Greven   •  , , ,

Proposition 211 harms your right to join others to form groups to press for government reform. With the law’s forced disclosure of names and addresses, fewer ...

New York’s complex laws restrict speech and advocacy
November 9, 2022   •  By Tiffany Donnelly   •  , , , ,

A new report says New York restricts more speech about government than any other state in the nation. The Institute for Free Speech, a ...

Free Speech Index
August 8, 2022   •  By Scott Blackburn   •  , , , , , , , , ,

The Institute for Free Speech is pleased to present the Free Speech Index: Grading the 50 States on the Freedom To Speak About Government. ...

Sheldon Whitehouse’s DISCLOSE Act would not have prevented Jan. 6
June 27, 2022   •  By Eric Wang   •  , , , ,

This reflects either a remarkable ignorance of or a flat-out disregard for what those existing laws regulate. This is also why the DISCLOSE Act ...

When They Attack ‘Dark Money,’ They’re Really Attacking Free Speech
March 25, 2022   •  By Alex Baiocco   •  , , , ,

By adopting Democrats' strategy of attacking so-called dark money groups at this week's confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, Republican senators are fueling ...

President Biden Asks Congress to Censor Political Speech in First State of the Union Address
March 9, 2022   •  By Nathan Maxwell   •  , , , , , ,

The State of the Union address is the president’s yearly opportunity to discuss solutions to the nation’s toughest problems before Congress. In President Joe ...

LTE: Who Knew I Was Friends With Bull Connor?
January 23, 2022   •  By David Keating   •  , , , ,

Much of the Freedom to Vote Act has nothing to do with voting. Nearly 200 pages of it propose an unprecedented assault on free ...

This “Free Speech Week,” Senate Dems Vote for Political Speech Restrictions
October 21, 2021   •  By Nathan Maxwell   •  , , , , ,

Some federal lawmakers have stopped at nothing this year to advance their bundle of political speech restrictions, now as S. 2747, the so-called “Freedom ...

The Freedom to Vote Act is remarkably anti-voter
October 19, 2021   •  By Nathan Maxwell   •  , , ,

Yet, the so-called Freedom to Vote Act, which is expected to receive a vote in the Senate this week, would restrict our right to ...

City of Austin v. Reagan National Advertising of Texas
September 29, 2021   •  By IFS Staff   •  , , ,

Austin has limited digitized billboards to only those that display “on-premises” messages, effectively prohibiting ideological or abstract messages. Austin raises various excuses to conceal ...

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