Do Californias Laws on Commercial Fundraising Violate the First Amendment?
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that content-neutral regulations on charitable solicitations violate the First Amendment unless they serve sufficiently strong, subordinating governmental interests and are narrowly drawn to serve those interests. The Court has approved of statutes requiring charitable fundraisers to register and provide financial disclosures. However, it has rejected statutes limiting the amounts that a fundraiser can charge or that charity can spend on fundraising, and statutes requiring a fundraiser to disclose the percentage of collected funds turned over to charities, because these rules impermissibly chill free speech by inhibiting fundraising. In 2004 and 2006, California adopted and amended the Nonprofit Integrity Act — a sweeping reform of California’s charitable fundraising regulations. Some elements of the Act, such as its requirements that charitable fundraisers register with and provide annual financial disclosures to the California Attorney General, do not
