Amicus Curiae Brief — Alaska Policy Forum, Petitioner v. Alaska Public Offices Commission, et al.

No. 26-88

IN THE

Supreme Court of the United States

____________________

ALASKA POLICY FORUM,

v.

Petitioner,

ALASKA PUBLIC OFFICES COMMISSION, ET AL.,

____________________

Respondents.

On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the

Supreme Court of Alaska

____________________

BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE PEOPLE UNITED

FOR PRIVACY FOUNDATION, THE

PHILANTHROPY ROUNDTABLE, THE

MANHATTAN INSTITUTE, AND

STATE POLICY NETWORK

IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER

____________________

ILYA SHAPIRO

TREVOR BURRUS

MANHATTAN INSTITUTE

52 Vanderbilt Ave.

New York, NY 10017

Tel.: 212.599.7000

ishapiro@manhattan.

institute

ALLEN J. DICKERSON

Counsel of Record

ALLISON D. TUCK

BAKER & HOSTETLER LLP

1050 Connecticut Ave.,

N.W., Suite 1100

Washington, D.C. 20036

Tel.: 202.861.1507

adickerson@bakerlaw.com

atuck@bakerlaw.com

Counsel for Amici Curiae

i

QUESTION PRESENTED

Whether the “informational interest” recognized in

Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), permits a State to

compel the public disclosure of any and all donors to

organizations engaged in political speech.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ............................... iv

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE ......................... 1

SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT ..................... 2

ARGUMENT ........................................................ 4

I.

This Court Protects Privacy of Association

Because the Chill Imposed by Compelled

Disclosure Is “Inevitable.” ......................... 4

II.

The Court Has Nevertheless Made an

Exception for Speech at the Core of the

First Amendment. ..................................... 7

III.

The Informational Interest Sustaining

Disclosure Regulations Was Never

Unbounded, and Exacting Scrutiny

Cannot Survive if it Becomes So. .............. 9

IV.

A.

The Court’s Articulations of the

Informational Interest Are Concrete

and Limited. .................................... 9

B.

Validating an Interest in Whatever

Information the Government

Demands is Circular Reasoning and

Nullifies Exacting Scrutiny. ......... 11

Lower Courts Now Treat the

Informational Interest as Boundless, and

the Consequences of that Treatment

Appear in this Case. ................................ 13

A.

Alaska’s Zero-Dollar Regime Lacks

Any Limiting Principle. ................ 15

iii

V.

Until the Court Pares Back the Standalone Informational Interest, Efforts to

Burden Political Giving Will Continue... 18

CONCLUSION ................................................... 20

iv

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases

Alaska Pol’y Forum v. Alaska Pub. Offs. Comm’n,

583 P.3d 701 (Alaska 2026) ........................... 18, 19

Ams. for Prosperity Found. v. Bonta, 594 U.S. 595

(2021) .............................................3, 4, 7, 13, 14, 21

Bates v. City of Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516 (1960)....... 6

Buckley v. Valeo,

424 U.S. 1 (1976) ..... 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 19, 23

Canyon Ferry Rd. Baptist Church of E. Helena, Inc.

v. Unsworth, 556 F.3d 1021 (9th Cir. 2009)........ 16

Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 558 U.S.

310 (2010) ................................................... 9, 11, 12

Coal. for Secular Gov’t v. Williams, 815 F.3d 1267

(10th Cir. 2016) .................................................... 17

Davis v. Fed. Election Comm’n,

554 U.S. 724 (2008) .............................................. 14

Eu v. San Francisco Cnty. Democratic Cent. Comm.,

489 U.S. 214 (1989) .............................................. 10

First Nat’l Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765

(1978) .......................................................... 8, 12, 22

Gaspee Project v. Mederos, 13 F.4th 79 (1st Cir.

2021) ..................................................................... 16

Gibson v. Fla. Legis. Investigation Comm., 372 U.S.

539 (1963) ............................................................... 6

Human Life of Wash. Inc. v. Brumsickle, 624 F.3d

990 (9th Cir. 2010) ............................................... 16

v

McConnell v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 540 U.S. 93

(2003) ........................................................ 12, 13, 19

McCutcheon v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 572 U.S. 185,

223 (2014) ......................................................... 9, 20

McDonald v. Fed. Election Comm’n, No. 25-10830

(5th Cir. Mar. 2, 2026) ......................................... 20

Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214 (1966)...................... 8

Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy, 401 U.S. 265 (1971) ....... 8

NAACP v. Ala. ex rel. Patterson,

357 U.S. 449 (1958) ............................................ 3, 5

Nat’l Republican Senatorial Comm. v. Fed. Election

Comm’n, 609 U.S. ___, No. 24-621 (June 30, 2026)

.............................................................................. 20

Sampson v. Buescher, 625 F.3d 1247 (10th Cir. 2010)

.............................................................................. 17

Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479 (1960) ..................... 6

Worley v. Florida Sec’y of State, 717 F.3d 1238 (11th

Cir. 2013) .............................................................. 16

Statutes

52 U.S.C. § 30104(b)(3)(A) ....................................... 18

52 U.S.C. § 30116(a)(8) ............................................ 19

Alaska Stat. § 15.13.040(d) ...................................... 17

Alaska Stat. § 15.13.040(h) ...................................... 17

Alaska Stat. § 15.13.050(a) ...................................... 17

Alaska Stat. § 15.13.090(a) ...................................... 17

Alaska Stat. § 15.13.140(b) ...................................... 17

1

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE1

People United for Privacy Foundation (PUFPF) is a

nonprofit, nonpartisan § 501(c)(3) organization that

advocates for the right of individual Americans to

come together in support of their shared values.

Pursuant to that interest, PUFPF submits comments

on proposed legislation and briefs in cases concerning

government action that threatens to chill nonprofit

advocacy by unlawfully unmasking organizations’

members and financial supporters.

The Philanthropy Roundtable is an independent

nonprofit organization and leading network of

charitable donors. Its mission is to promote excellence

in philanthropy, protect philanthropic freedom, and

help donors achieve their philanthropic intent and

advance liberty, opportunity, and personal

responsibility in the United States and abroad.

The Manhattan Institute (MI) is a nonprofit policy

research foundation that works to keep America and

its great cities prosperous, safe, and free. MI develops

and disseminates ideas that foster individual freedom

and economic choice across multiple dimensions. To

that end, it produces scholarship and files briefs

opposing regulations that violate constitutionally

1 Counsel of record for all parties received notice of Amici’s in-

tention to file this brief at least 10 days prior to its due date.

Pursuant to Rule 37.6, counsel for Amici Curiae certifies that no

party’s counsel authored this brief in whole or in part, and no

party, party’s counsel, or person other than Amici Curiae contributed money to fund the brief’s preparation or submission.

2

protected liberties, including the freedom of speech

and political participation.

State Policy Network (SPN) is an independent

501(c)(3) association made up of state-focused,

market-oriented policy research organizations that

advocate and educate on matters of public policy

throughout all fifty states. SPN is committed to

helping its affiliates achieve enduring policy wins

that defend liberty in their state and amplify the

growth and influence of state-based organizations,

with a commitment to advancing and protecting

federalism, civil society, and free enterprise. SPN

stands for the interests of countless nonprofits and

the people associated with them who, through their

time and generosity, contribute to America’s robust

civil society and work to address society’s most

pressing problems.

As organizations dedicated to public advocacy,

private association, and the important role of an

independent civil society in our national life, Amici

believe this Court must act to secure effective judicial

review of governmental demands for nonprofit donor

information.

SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT

For nearly seventy years, this Court has held that

government demands for the identities of an

organization’s members and financial supporters are

constitutionally suspect. The chill that follows

compelled disclosure is not mere conjecture; it “arises

as an inevitable result of the government’s conduct in

requiring disclosure.” Ams. for Prosperity Found. v.

3

Bonta, 594 U.S. 595, 607 (2021) (AFPF) (quoting

Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 65 (1976) (per curiam)).

From NAACP v. Ala. ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449

(1958), through AFPF, this Court has treated donor

privacy as the constitutional baseline and required

governments to justify each intrusion under exacting

scrutiny.

Yet the Court has tolerated an exception for

expression at the core of the First Amendment’s

protections: speech about policy issues, candidates,

elections, and ballot measures. Confronting statutes

hostile to political speech itself, the Court has

accepted disclosure as the lesser evil, “the least

restrictive means of curbing the evils of campaign

ignorance and corruption.” Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S.

1, 68 (1976). And to sustain that concession, it has

invoked a governmental “informational interest” in

telling voters where political money comes from. Id.

at 80–81.

That interest is not, and never has been,

unbounded. As articulated in Buckley and further

refined in a line of campaign finance cases stretching

to the present day, it is an interest in material

financial support: information a reasonable voter can

use to evaluate a candidate or a measure. And it must

remain bounded because exacting scrutiny requires

that a disclosure regime be “narrowly tailored to the

interest it promotes,” AFPF, 594 U.S. at 611

(quotation marks and citations omitted). In other

words, constitutional tailoring presupposes an

interest that has outer limits. An interest defined as

the value of whatever information the government

4

demands is circular: every demand satisfies it, and

the demand becomes its own justification.

Here, for example, the Alaska Supreme Court

applied this circular rationale—if the government

demands information, it’s clearly important—to

target an organization that did not engage in

electoral advocacy and to sustain a regime with no

monetary threshold whatsoever. While courts use a

scalpel to protect political speech from laws like “no

political pamphleteering in the public park,” they

routinely let governments address donor disclosure

with a sledgehammer. Meanwhile, technological

advances have transformed disclosure from paper

filings consulted by professionals into permanent,

searchable electronic databases of citizens’ political

contributions.

The Court should grant the Petition and confirm

that the informational interest has limits against

which narrow tailoring can be measured. Better yet,

it should begin harmonizing its political-disclosure

precedents with the robust protection for private

association the First Amendment commands in every

other context.

ARGUMENT

I.

This Court Protects Privacy of Association Because the Chill Imposed by Compelled Disclosure Is “Inevitable.”

The “freedom to engage in association for the

advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable

aspect” of liberty, and “[e]ffective advocacy of both

5

public and private points of view, particularly

controversial ones, is undeniably enhanced by group

association.” NAACP, 357 U.S. at 460. From that

premise, this Court drew a conclusion that has

anchored its associational jurisprudence ever since:

“compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups

engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a

restraint on freedom of association” as a direct

prohibition. Id. at 462. Alabama could not demand

the NAACP’s membership lists, not because any

particular member first proved he would be harmed,

but because the demand itself endangered all the

members’ ability “to pursue their collective effort to

foster beliefs which they admittedly have the right to

advocate.” Id. at 462–63.

The cases that followed dealt with subtler

intrusions. First Amendment freedoms are protected

“not only against heavy-handed frontal attack, but

also from being stifled by more subtle governmental

interference.” Bates v. City of Little Rock, 361 U.S.

516, 523 (1960). Even a “legitimate and substantial”

governmental purpose “cannot be pursued by means

that broadly stifle fundamental personal liberties

when the end can be more narrowly achieved.”

Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479, 488 (1960). And the

interest in keeping one’s associations confidential is

itself constitutionally weighty: a “strong associational

interest in maintaining the privacy of membership

lists.” Gibson v. Fla. Legis. Investigation Comm., 372

U.S. 539, 555–56 (1963).

Buckley v. Valeo gathered these cases into “general

principles,” explaining that this Court has

6

“repeatedly found that compelled disclosure, in itself,

can seriously infringe on privacy of association and

belief guaranteed by the First Amendment.” 424 U.S.

at 64. Critically, the Court did not treat the resulting

chill as conjecture a plaintiff must prove. The

“deterrent effect on the exercise of First Amendment

rights” arises “as an unintended but inevitable result

of the government’s conduct in requiring disclosure.”

Id. at 65.

Five years ago, the Court reaffirmed this line of

reasoning. Reviewing California’s “dragnet for

sensitive donor information,” AFPF confirmed that

exacting scrutiny is “triggered by ‘state action which

may have the effect of curtailing the freedom to

associate,’ and by the ‘possible deterrent effect’ of

disclosure.” 594 U.S. at 614, 616 (quoting NAACP,

357 U.S. at 460–61).2 No showing of actual reprisal is

required: “[t]he risk of a chilling effect on association

is enough, because First Amendment freedoms need

breathing space to survive.” Id. at 618–19 (citation

and quotation marks omitted).

The rule that emerges is straightforward: privacy

of association is the default. When the government

demands to know who belongs to, or financially

supports, an advocacy organization, the demand is

suspect from the start, and the government bears the

burden of justifying it every time.

2 Justice Thomas would have gone further and applied strict

scrutiny. 594 U.S. at 619 (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment).

7

II.

The Court Has Nevertheless Made an

Exception for Speech at the Core of the

First Amendment.

If any category of expression should receive the full

measure of protection, it is speech about elections and

public policy. “[T]here is practically universal

agreement that a major purpose of th[e] [First]

Amendment was to protect the free discussion of

governmental affairs,” including “discussions of

candidates” and “all such matters relating to political

processes.” Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, 218–19

(1966). The constitutional guarantee “has its fullest

and most urgent application precisely to the conduct

of campaigns for political office.” Monitor Patriot Co.

v. Roy, 401 U.S. 265, 272 (1971). And when the people

legislate directly, speech about the measure before

them “is at the heart of the First Amendment’s

protection.” First Nat’l Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435

U.S. 765, 776 (1978).

Yet it is exactly here that the Court has permitted

what it forbids elsewhere. Buckley upheld a statute

requiring public reports identifying—by name,

address, occupation, and principal place of business—

those who contributed as little as $100.01 in a

calendar year. 424 U.S. at 81–83. The Court conceded

the thresholds were “indeed low,” that small

contributors “are likely to be especially sensitive to

recording or disclosure of their political preferences,”

and that Congress had given the line little thought,

having “merely . . . adopted the thresholds existing in

similar disclosure laws since 1910.” Id. at 83. It

deferred anyway. The line, it reasoned, “is necessarily

8

a judgmental decision, best left in the context of this

complex legislation to congressional discretion.” Id.

That deference inaugurated the strange situation

that exists to this day: courts declare in strong and

even poetic language that donor and contributor

privacy is of paramount importance to our most

cherished First Amendment rights, but they then

consistently and almost without fail defer to

whatever the legislature says is necessary. That is

the opposite of scrutiny. Exacting scrutiny has

become a hortatory constitutional affirmation rather

than an applicable test with any teeth whatsoever.

The Buckley Court and its successors accepted this

arrangement because the proposed alternative was

worse. Disclosure, it reasoned, is “the least restrictive

means of curbing the evils of campaign ignorance and

corruption that Congress found to exist”—a lesser

evil than expenditure ceilings and outright bans. Id.

at 68. That logic has carried the doctrine for half a

century. See Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n,

558 U.S. 310, 369 (2010) (“disclosure is a less

restrictive alternative to more comprehensive

regulations of speech”); McCutcheon v. Fed. Election

Comm’n, 572 U.S. 185, 223 (2014) (plurality op.)

(“disclosure often represents a less restrictive

alternative to flat bans on certain types or quantities

of speech”).

Chief Justice Burger saw the problem with this

approach at the outset: “secrecy and privacy as to

political preferences and convictions are fundamental

in a free society,” he wrote, objecting to the “ill-

9

defined ‘public interest’” invoked “to breach the

historic safeguards guaranteed by the First

Amendment.” Buckley, 424 U.S. at 237–38 (Burger,

C.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).

Governmental power, he reminded the Court, “cannot

be used to force a citizen to disclose his private

affiliations,” even absent “any systematic harassment

or retaliation.” Id. (cleaned up).

The result is a body of law at odds with itself.

Outside the context of policy discussions and electoral

advocacy, compelled disclosure is presumptively

suspect and the government must carry its burden in

every case. Within it, contributors receive the least

privacy precisely where the First Amendment

promises the most protection. Cf. Eu v. San Francisco

Cnty. Democratic Cent. Comm., 489 U.S. 214, 223

(1989). Whether that inversion should survive at all

is a question for another day. What matters now is

the interest the Court has used to sustain it because

that interest, properly understood, has limits courts

below have abandoned.

III.

The Informational Interest Sustaining

Disclosure Regulations Was Never Unbounded, and Exacting Scrutiny Cannot Survive if it Becomes So.

A.

The Court’s Articulations of the Informational Interest Are Concrete and Limited.

Buckley identified three interests served by federal

disclosure requirements: informing the electorate,

deterring corruption “by exposing large contributions

and expenditures to the light of publicity,” and

10

gathering the data needed to police the statute’s

substantive rules. 424 U.S. at 66–68. The first—the

informational interest—has become the workhorse.

Standing alone, it is said to be “sufficient to justify”

disclosure laws. Citizens United, 558 U.S. at 369. Its

meaning therefore matters enormously.

As Buckley described it, the interest is specific.

Disclosure “provides the electorate with information

‘as to where political campaign money comes from

and how it is spent by the candidate’ in order to aid

the voters in evaluating those who seek federal

office.” 424 U.S. at 66–67 (footnote omitted). “The

sources of a candidate’s financial support also alert

the voter to the interests to which a candidate is most

likely to be responsive and thus facilitate predictions

of future performance in office.” Id. at 67.

Each articulation since has been similarly concrete.

Sponsor identification may be required “so that the

people will be able to evaluate the arguments to

which they are being subjected.” Bellotti, 435 U.S. at

792 n.32. Electioneering-communication reporting

lets the public “identify the source of the funding

behind broadcast advertisements influencing certain

elections.” McConnell v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 540

U.S. 93, 196 (2003) (citation omitted). “[T]he public

has an interest in knowing who is speaking about a

candidate shortly before an election,” Citizens United,

558 U.S. at 369, so that voters can “make informed

decisions and give proper weight to different speakers

and messages,” id. at 371.

11

Two features run through these formulations.

First, the interest is evaluative: it applies to

information a reasonable voter could use in judging a

message, a candidate, or a measure. And second, the

interest is material: it has always been linked to

financial support of a magnitude capable of telling the

voter something—the “large contributions” whose

exposure Buckley emphasized, the funders “behind”

an advertising campaign. 424 U.S. at 67; McConnell,

540 U.S. at 196.

Alaska’s actions here flunk both prongs. First, even

if a reasonable voter had an interest in the donors to

an organization supporting or opposing a ballot

measure, no reasonable voter will take a position

based on a nonprofit blog post that does not even

mention the measure. Pet. 2. Second, as Buckley itself

recognized, the government’s interest attenuates as

amounts shrink. It sustained a $100 line not because

the amount is constitutionally irrelevant, but because

Congress was entitled to some room in drawing it. 424

U.S. at 83. Failing to draw a line at all, as Alaska has

done here, cannot be justified under even the most

permissive of this Court’s precedents.

B.

Validating an Interest in Whatever Information the Government Demands is Circular Reasoning and Nullifies Exacting

Scrutiny.

Exacting scrutiny demands “a substantial relation

between the disclosure requirement and a sufficiently

important governmental interest,” and requires that

“the disclosure requirement be narrowly tailored to

12

the interest it promotes.” AFPF, 594 U.S. at 611

(quotation marks and citations omitted). Tailoring to

this standard involves evaluating both the demand

for information and the interest that exists

independently of that demand.

If one redefines the informational interest as an

interest in the disclosure itself—an interest in

whatever information the government elects to

demand at a given point in time—the comparison

disappears. Every disclosure statute then supplies its

own justification: the statute demands information,

and the interest is defined as the value of receiving

the information demanded. This is both tautological

and unsustainable. Exacting scrutiny is designed to

make the government justify each intrusion, and it

cannot coexist with an interest that is satisfied by the

intrusion itself.

This Court has never accepted that circular

rationale. When an informational rationale has

floated free of any legitimate regulatory anchor, the

Court has rejected it. In Davis, the government

defended a disclosure requirement on informational

grounds after the substantive scheme it served was

held unconstitutional; the Court struck the disclosure

requirement too. Davis v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 554

U.S. 724, 744 (2008). In AFPF, California insisted

that up-front collection of donor information was

important and efficient; the Court found “a dramatic

mismatch” between the State’s actual interest and its

demand and invalidated the regime. 594 U.S. at 612,

614–15. In each case, the analysis succeeded only

because the asserted interest had content against

13

which the demand could be tested. If the

informational interest is stripped of that content, no

disclosure law would ever fail.

IV.

Lower Courts Now Treat the Informational Interest as Boundless, and the

Consequences of that Treatment Appear in this Case.

Courts routinely sustain sweeping disclosure

regimes on a bare invocation of the informational

interest, which is recited rather than examined.

Consider the position the State of Delaware is

pressing in the Third Circuit at this moment.

Delaware’s Elections Disclosure Act requires

organizations

sponsoring

“electioneering

communications” to publicly report their donors.

Defending the statute, the State argues that the

informational interest is “alone . . . sufficient to

justify” disclosure laws; that “there is no alternative

means of achieving the Act’s informational interest

without its donor disclosure requirements”; and that

“the very point of an electoral disclosure law is to

bring important election information to the public.”

Brief for Appellees 30–32, Ams. for Prosperity Found.

v. Albence, No. 26-2469 (3d Cir. July 29, 2026). Each

proposition assumes its conclusion. If “the very point”

of a disclosure law is disclosure, the law’s fit with its

purpose is guaranteed before the analysis begins—

and no “alternative means” could ever exist, because

the interest simply is the mandated production of

donor names.

14

Appellate courts have blessed comparable

reasoning. See, e.g., Gaspee Project v. Mederos, 13

F.4th 79, 92–94 (1st Cir. 2021) (sustaining donor

disclosure and on-ad disclaimers for issue advocacy

as serving “the government’s substantial interest in

transparent

elections—the

bedrock

of

our

democracy”), cert. denied, 142 S. Ct. 2647 (2022);

Human Life of Wash. Inc. v. Brumsickle, 624 F.3d 990

(9th Cir. 2010) (sustaining disclosure obligations for

advertisements that never mentioned the ballot

measure at issue); Worley v. Florida Sec’y of State,

717 F.3d 1238, 1251 (11th Cir. 2013) (upholding a

“first-dollar disclosure threshold” under the

informational interest), cert. denied sub nom. Worley

v. Detzner, 571 U.S. 991 (2013).

The decisions holding the line, by contrast, stand

out because those courts asked what the disclosed

information is worth to voters and whether the

informational interest is limited. “As a matter of

common sense, the value of this financial information

to the voters declines drastically as the value of the

expenditure or contribution sinks to a negligible

level.” Canyon Ferry Rd. Baptist Church of E. Helena,

Inc. v. Unsworth, 556 F.3d 1021, 1033 (9th Cir. 2009)

(holding

Montana’s

then-existing

first-dollar

disclosure law unconstitutional as applied to de

minimis, in-kind church expenditures). Accord

Sampson v. Buescher, 625 F.3d 1247, 1261 (10th Cir.

2010) (public interest in disclosure of a small-scale

ballot-issue committee’s contributors was “minimal”);

Coal. for Secular Gov’t v. Williams, 815 F.3d 1267

15

(10th Cir. 2016) (similar, for a group spending

roughly $3,500).

A.

Alaska’s Zero-Dollar Regime Lacks Any

Limiting Principle.

The decision below carries this boundless version of

the government’s interest to its logical end. Alaska

requires every person making an expenditure to

influence a ballot proposition to register with the

State and to file reports identifying, among other

things, the contributions the speaker has received.

Alaska

Stat.

§§

15.13.040(d),

15.13.050(a),

15.13.140(b). As this case shows, even a 501(c)(3)

nonprofit reposting general commentary concerning

an issue of public policy is enough to trigger the law.

Covered communications must carry a “paid for by”

disclosure, and organizational speakers must name

their three largest contributors over the preceding

twelve months on the face of the communication. Id.

§ 15.13.090(a). The statutes exempt modest activity

by individuals, see id. § 15.13.040(h) (up to $500 for

certain printed materials) but contain no monetary

threshold for organizations. For a nonprofit, the

obligations begin at the first dollar spent.

Petitioner’s case illustrates what a zero-dollar

threshold means in practice. Alaska Policy Forum

published a report, two press releases, a blog post,

and a video criticizing ranked-choice voting. The

Alaska Public Offices Commission, with unlikely

precision, found that the organization spent $643.20

in staff time on the effort, and on that basis found

that it was required to register as a political speaker,

16

file expenditure reports, and stamp its publications

with the names of its three largest contributors. See

Alaska Pol’y Forum v. Alaska Pub. Offs. Comm’n, 583

P.3d 701, 713 (Alaska 2026). The Alaska Supreme

Court affirmed, holding the interest in an “informed

electorate” strong enough to satisfy exacting scrutiny

and rejecting Petitioner’s argument that the public

has little interest in the funders of speech that costs

almost nothing to produce, and which did not even

discuss a specific ballot measure. Id. at 730.

That result should be measured against the

informational interest articulated by this Court.

What voter evaluating the ballot measure needs to

know who financed a few hundred dollars of a think

tank’s staff time? There is no candidate whose “future

performance in office” the disclosure helps predict,

Buckley, 424 U.S. at 67, and no sum capable of

purchasing anyone’s responsiveness. There is no

advertising campaign whose funders the public might

wish to see “behind,” McConnell, 540 U.S. at 196—

there is only a blog post. There is no indication the

organization’s funders even supported the post in

question. Such disclosure serves no interest this

Court has ever described. It survives below only

because the informational interest has been recast as

an interest in disclosure itself: an interest no statute

can fail.

Nor is Alaska an outlier. Federal law now exhibits

the same pathology. Congress requires political

committees to itemize a contributor only after his or

her donations aggregate above $200 in a year, 52

U.S.C. § 30104(b)(3)(A), indicating that, below that

17

line, publication of donor information tells the

electorate nothing worth the privacy intrusion. Yet

under the federal conduit rule, intermediaries that

forward earmarked contributions must report the

“original source” of each one, with no monetary floor

at all. Id. § 30116(a)(8). The practical result is that

millions of Americans who give five or ten dollars

through online fundraising platforms are cataloged in

a permanent, public database, even though Congress

itself concluded that identical contributions made

directly to a committee carry no informational value.

That regime, too, is being defended on the strength of

the freestanding informational interest. See

McDonald v. Fed. Election Comm’n, No. 25-10830

(5th Cir. Mar. 2, 2026).

Moreover, the internet has raised the stakes.

Disclosure does not mean the same thing it did in

1976, when reports were filed on paper and made

available for review in a public depository. The Court

has celebrated that change: “disclosure now offers a

particularly effective means of arming the voting

public with information,” thanks to modern

technology. McCutcheon, 572 U.S. at 224; accord

Nat’l Republican Senatorial Comm. v. Fed. Election

Comm’n, 609 U.S. ___, No. 24-621 (June 30, 2026.)

But effectiveness cuts both ways, and the Court has

acknowledged that the risks of disclosure “are

heightened in the 21st century and seem to grow with

each passing year, as ‘anyone with access to a

computer can compile a wealth of information about’

anyone else, including such sensitive details as a

person’s home address or the school attended by his

18

children.” AFPF, 594 U.S. at 617 (citation and

quotation marks omitted). These “effective”

disclosure regimes have become permanent,

granular, instantly searchable public records of

citizens’ political commitments, which never expire

and can be cross-referenced with everything else on

the internet.

The dangers are of two kinds. The first is

retaliation, much of it informal and unrecorded. Such

harms rarely generate the affidavits courts demand

or justify the expenditures required for litigation,

which is one reason this Court has not required proof

of them before applying exacting scrutiny. See AFPF,

594 U.S. at 618–19. The second is temporal. A donor

cannot know how today’s mainstream cause will be

viewed in ten years, and a permanent record converts

every modest contribution into a lifelong wager on the

direction of public opinion. Rational citizens respond

by declining the wager and not giving at all.

An informational interest with no floor, applied

through technology with no friction to records with no

expiration, is a standing license to inventory the civic

commitments of ordinary citizens. Nothing in Buckley

or its successors blesses that result.

V.

Until the Court Pares Back the Standalone Informational Interest, Efforts to

Burden Political Giving Will Continue.

This pattern will not correct itself. Disclosure

mandates appeal to legislatures for reasons that have

nothing to do with informing anyone. They burden

critics while using the vocabulary of transparency.

19

Lower courts, reading this Court’s political-disclosure

precedents at their broadest, will keep sustaining

such results. And each denial of review teaches that

the informational interest is simply a phrase to be

recited rather than a standard that must be met.

In a ballot measure election, there is no candidate

and thus no anticorruption rationale: “The risk of

corruption perceived in cases involving candidate

elections . . . simply is not present in a popular vote

on a public issue.” Bellotti, 435 U.S. at 790. The

decision below rests on the informational interest

alone, at the lowest possible threshold, as applied to

core political speech by a nonprofit policy

organization. If that application is constitutional, the

government’s interest has no content and “exacting

scrutiny” has no function.

The Court should confirm, at a minimum, that the

informational interest is what its precedents

describe: a bounded interest in material financial

support for electoral advocacy, with content against

which narrow tailoring can be measured. Better still,

it should begin harmonizing its political-disclosure

cases with the “privacy of association and belief

guaranteed by the First Amendment” that governs

everywhere else. Buckley, 424 U.S. at 64. Until it

does, efforts to burden political giving, and the

citizens who sustain civic advocacy, will continue.

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CONCLUSION

The petition for a writ of certiorari should be

granted.

Respectfully submitted,

ILYA SHAPIRO

TREVOR BURRUS

MANHATTAN INSTITUTE

52 Vanderbilt Ave.

New York, NY 10017

Tel.: 212.599.7000

ishapiro@manhattan.

institute

ALLEN J. DICKERSON

Counsel of Record

ALLISON D. TUCK

BAKER & HOSTETLER LLP

1050 Connecticut Ave.,

N.W., Suite 1100

Washington, D.C. 20036

Tel.: 202.861.1507

adickerson@bakerlaw.com

atuck@bakerlaw.com

Counsel for Amici Curiae

August 20, 2026