No On E San Franciscans v. Chiu

A San Francisco ordinance requires certain political advertisements to display and announce who donated to an organization sponsoring the advertisement. If the donors themselves are organizations, the ordinance also requires displaying and announcing the two main donors to those organizations. The ordinance was challenged in court by a group of organizations wanting to run advertisements. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the ordinance, ruling that the government’s interest in disclosure outweighed the plaintiffs’ privacy or freedom-of-association concerns.

In March 2024, FIRE joined Americans for Prosperity and the Manhattan Institute in an amicus curiae brief urging the Supreme Court to take this case on appeal. The brief shows that San Francisco’s ordinance endangers the privacy and associational rights of donors. In particular, the ordinance compels disclosure of donors even when those donors do not agree with and do not want to be associated with the advertisement.