Trump Administration’s Efforts to Strip Shareholder Rights Makes the Miserable Citizens United Impacts Even Worse

On the 16th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision that unleashed unlimited election spending by big corporations, a Public Citizen analysis has found the Trump Administration has taken unprecedented actions to prevent shareholders from being able to hold companies accountable for their political spending decisions – something the Supreme Court relied on in Citizens United. In the Citizens United majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote:

“There is, furthermore, little evidence of abuse that cannot be corrected by shareholders ‘through the procedures of corporate democracy.’”

“…prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters. Shareholders can determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits …”

Polling has shown that the vast majority of Americans who are invested in the stock market as corporate shareholders strongly support increased transparency and accountability related to the political spending of publicly traded corporations.

However, in the first year of the second Trump Administration, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), under Trump appointee Chair Paul Atkins, acted in unprecedented ways to erect barriers to shareholders holding companies accountable for corporate political spending. In October, Atkins gave a major speech outlining ways companies might more often be able to exclude shareholder proposals from being voted on. In November, Atkins’ staff issued new guidelines that effectively encouraged companies to exclude shareholder proposals from being voted on. And since November, Atkins’ staff has issued more than 70 “No Objection” letters to companies advising them that, based solely on the company’s representations, the SEC “will not object if the Company excludes the Proposal from its proxy materials.” This includes SEC “No Objection” letters issued to four companies that seek to exclude political spending transparency shareholder proposals from their 2026 proxy statements: Pfizer, Teledyne Technologies Incorporated, Huntington Ingalls Industries, and Cadence Design Systems.

“SEC Chair Atkins’ draconian actions to silence shareholder voices have ripped away the fig leaf by which the Supreme Court aimed to hide the shame of Citizens United,” said Jon Golinger, Democracy Advocate with Public Citizen.

“Without shareholder accountability, we are even more at risk of corporations dictating the results of American elections. We call on Congress to pass legislation that prevents public companies from silencing their shareholders as a modest step to mitigate the harms of Citizens United. Ultimately, to undo massive damage, Congress must adopt and the states must ratify a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and related decisions and to restore the principle that we the people, not Big Money, must decide our elections.”