Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia are backing Montana in its fight to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision from being used to strike down state laws restricting corporate campaign spending. 
 
 The states led by New York are asking the high court to preserve Montana's state-level regulations on corporate political expenditures, according to a copy of a brief written by New York's attorney general's office and obtained by The Associated Press. The brief will be publicly released Monday. 
 
 The Supreme Court is being asked to reverse a state court's decision to uphold the Montana law. Virginia-based American Tradition Partnership is asking the nation's high court to rule without a hearing because the group says the state law conflicts directly with the Citizens United decision that removed the federal ban on corporate campaign spending. 
 
 The Supreme Court has blocked the Montana law until it can look at the case. 
 
 The Montana case has prompted critics to hope the court will reverse itself on the controversial Citizens United ruling. The 22 states and D.C. say the Montana law is sharply different from the federal issues in the Citizens United case, so the ruling shouldn't apply to Montana's or other state laws regulating corporate campaign spending. 
 
 But the states also said they would support a Supreme Court decision to reconsider portions of the Citizens United ruling either in a future case or in the Montana case, if the justices decide to take it on. 
 
 Legal observers say don't count on the Supreme Court reconsidering its decision. 
 
 "It is highly unlikely that the Court would reverse its decision in Citizens United," said law professor Richard L. Hasen of the University of California-Irvine. 
 
 At best, the court would listen to arguments and might agree a clarification is needed to allow the Montana law to stand. But even that is a long shot, Hasen said. 
 
 Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock argues that political corruption in the Copper King era led to the state ban on corporate campaign spending. A clarification of Citizens United is needed to make clear that states can block certain political spending in the interest of limiting corruption, he said. 
 
 American Tradition Partnership argues that the state bans unfairly restrict the ability of corporations to engage in the political process that also affects them. 
 
 Bullock wrote in a brief to be released Monday that the state does not "ban" corporate political speech, rather, it regulates that speech by requiring the formation of political action committees. 
 
 The Democrat, who is running for governor, said the upstart political corporations hoping to take advantage of unfettered spending are merely "an anonymous conduit of unaccountable campaign spending." 
 
 Montana and the other states are asking the court to either let the Montana Supreme Court decision stand or to hold a full hearing. They argue laws like the one in Montana that bans political spending straight from corporate treasuries are needed to prevent corruption. 
 
 The other states, many with their own type of restrictions hanging in the balance, argue local restrictions are far different than the federal ban the court decided unconstitutionally restricted free speech. Further, state elections are at much greater risk than federal elections of being dominated by corporate money, requiring tailored regulation, the states' court filing says. 
 
 "The federal law struck down in Citizens United applied only to elections for President and U.S. Congress," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wrote on behalf of the states. "By contrast, Montana's law applies to a wide range of state and local offices, including judgeships and law enforcement positions such as sheriff and county prosecutor." 
 
 The joining states, unlike Montana, ask the court to go further and reconsider core findings in Citizens United. They argue, for instance, it was wrong for the court to say unlimited independent expenditures rarely cause corruption or the appearance of corruption. 
 
 And other critics of the Citizens United decision who believe the court was wrong to grant corporations constitutional rights, have intervened and asked the court to reverse itself. 
 
 "There is a growing bipartisan consensus that Citizens United needs to be overturned, and Montana is leading the way," said Peter Schurman, spokesman for a group called Free Speech For People. "The Supreme Court has an opportunity to revisit Citizens United here. That is important because there is evidence everywhere that unlimited spending in our elections creates both corruption and the appearance for corruption." 
 
 On Friday, Montana's case was given a boost when U.S. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., signed on in support. The senators argue evidence following the Citizens United decision, where millions in unregulated money has poured into presidential elections, shows that large independent expenditures can lead to corruption. 
 
 The states who filed the brief in support of Montana are New York, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. 
 
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 Associated Press writer Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report. ||||| Nearly half of US states have thrown their weight behind a legal defence of local laws restricting corporate money in politics by asking the supreme court to revisit its widely-criticised ban on similar national legislation. 
 
 The states filed a brief with the supreme court on Monday in support of a century-old law in Montana – the Corrupt Practices Act – against companies pumping money into elections. 
 
 The law was struck down by a Montana court following the US supreme court ruling two years ago in the Citizens United case, which lifted most restrictions on corporations spending money on political advertising. However, the Montana supreme court has since upheld the state law, putting it in conflict with the Citizens United ruling. 
 
 If the supreme court agrees to take up the case, it is not likely to overturn Citizens United, but it could hand down a decision that would give state legislatures greater leeway in limiting corporate money in politics. 
 
 The states argue that corporate money can have an even more corroding effect at a local level than on national politics. 
 
 The Montana supreme court ruled that the ban was justified because of a history in the state of powerful corporate interests, copper mining companies, distorting politics with money. The ban was passed by a referendum in 1912. 
 
 That position has been challenged by a conservative interest group, American Tradition Partnership, which has asked the US supreme court to overturn the Montana ruling. The court blocked its implementation in February and is now considering whether to hear arguments in the case or simply issue a ruling reversing the Montana judgement. 
 
 In a submission to the supreme court on Monday, attorneys general from 22 states and Washington, DC representing both major parties called for the Montana law to be upheld. 
 
 "The Montana law at issue here, like many other state laws regulating corporate campaign expenditures in state and local elections, is sharply different from the federal law struck down in Citizens United, and the Court need not revise its ruling in Citizens United in order to sustain the challenged Montana law," wrote New York's attorney-general, Eric Schneiderman, in the brief. 
 
 The challenge over the Montana action has been backed by Senator John McCain, who authored the campaign finance law struck down by the US supreme court in Citizens United. In that ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion said that money does not "give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption". 
 
 In his brief in the Montana case, McCain argued that there is already evidence since the Citizens United ruling that large sums of money thrown into the political process is having a corrupting effect. 
 
 "A problem does exist. Evidence from the 2010 and 2012 electoral cycles has demonstrated that so-called independent expenditures create a strong potential for corruption and the perception thereof. The news confirms, daily, that existing campaign finance rules purporting to provide for 'independence' and 'disclosure' in fact provide neither. 
 
 "Regulatory filings show that much of the funding for independent expenditures comes from shell companies, pass-through entities, and non-profit organizations that conceal the true source of the individuals and companies supporting them," said McCain's brief. 
 
 But ATP said in its petition to the supreme court said there is no evidence Citizens United has corrupted the political process and that Montana's history of past abuses has no bearing on the law today. 
 
 "Citizens United has not proven unworkable, as evidenced by those who have exercised their liberty under it. Lower courts, except for the decision below, have uniformly followed this court's holding, and legislatures and government agencies, with few exceptions, have implemented the protections of Citizens United," it said. 
 
 "Is this court going to limit the right of speakers to engage in core political speech because they spend huge sums in doing so? Or because the state they happen to be in had corruption problems, or a corporation employed a lot of people, over a century ago? Or because the same corporation owned a lot of newspapers in the state in the 1950s? Or because the state they happen to be in has few people, a tradition of low-cost elections, or considerable candidate-voter contact?" 
 
 Two of the supreme court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, have welcomed the opportunity to revisit the Citizens United case. 
 
 "Montana's experience, and experience elsewhere since this court's decision in Citizens United … make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations 'do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption,'" Ginsburg wrote. 
 
 She added that a further supreme court hearing "will give the court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates' allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway". ||||| Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. 
 
 On the rare occasions when the world talks to you in stereo, it’s a good idea to set aside your knitting and listen. This week, Americans got their first good look at what super PACs—political organizations that can receive unlimited corporate contributions and make unlimited expenditures for federal candidates—have wrought in Iowa. At the same time, the Montana Supreme Court issued a stunning opinion last Friday, upholding the state’s law limiting corporate election spending. Think of the two as a sort of woofer and tweeter for life in a post-Citizens United world. 
 
 Dahlia Lithwick Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate and hosts the podcast Amicus. 
 
 
 
 The impact of the so-called super PAC on the Iowa election has been profound. Just ask Newt Gingrich, who was clobbered by almost a third of the more than $14 million in super-PAC ad money spent in the weeks before the caucus. When the court handed down that decision in 2010, it assumed both that these expenditures would be independent of the candidate’s official campaigns (they’re not; one is financed by Jon Huntsman’s dad) and that disclosure rules would ensure that Americans knew who was buying and selling their elections (we don’t). 
 
 Ruth Marcus has a great piece explaining all the ways in which the super PACs are both coordinating with campaigns and evading federal disclosure requirements. She notes that this was the inevitable consequence of both the Citizens United decision and subsequent lower-court rulings. Whether he meant to or not, she writes, Justice Anthony Kennedy, with his majority opinion in that case, managed to “clear the path for independent expenditure committees backing a particular candidate—and bankrolled by the candidate’s father or run by his former top aides.” 
 
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 Democracy 21 issued a report today questioning whether these candidate-specific super PACs can possibly meet the legal requirements of “total independence” from the campaigns, as required by the language of Citizens United. That’s the problem when you give corporations the same First Amendment rights as citizens. It’s not just that the resulting citizens are louder and meaner than regular people. They also refuse to tell you who they are and how much a gently worn candidate is selling for these days. 
 
 Prof. Richard L. Hasen explained all this back in October, pointing out that the fundamental flaw in Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Citizens United lay in his assertion that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” That sentence opened the door to super PACS and ignored the reality of everything we all know about the corrupting influence of unlimited money on a political campaign. 
 
 Which brings us to the Montana Supreme Court, which more or less announced last week that it would similarly just ignore Justice Kennedy’s pronouncements about money and corruption. The Montana court more or less announced it would uphold that state’s corporate spending ban because they know a lot more about political corruption than Anthony Kennedy does. The Montana law was enacted in 1912 and provides that “a corporation may not make a contribution or an expenditure in connection with a candidate or a political committee that supports or opposes a candidate or a political party." After the Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United decision in 2010, many similar state laws were struck down by the courts or repealed, and a lower court in Montana agreed that the Montana ban was unconstitutional as well, finding that “Citizens United is unequivocal: the government may not prohibit independent and indirect corporate expenditures on political speech.” 
 
 But by a 5-2 margin, Montana’s high court determined that the state law survived “strict scrutiny” because Montana’s unique context and history justified the ban in ways not contemplated by Citizens United. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Mike McGrath dove deep into that history, ranging back over the “tumultuous years … marked by rough contests for political and economic domination primarily in the mining center of Butte, between mining and industrial enterprises controlled by foreign trusts or corporations.” Noting that, back in the last Gilded Age, Montana's wealthy "Copper Kings" bought judges and senators, picked the location of the capital, and owned the media, McGrath pointed to Montana’s vast size, sparse population, low-cost elections, and long history of having its resources plundered by foreign corporate interests to emphasize that the state has a compelling interest in maintaining its ban. 
 
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 McGrath lays it out this way: “The question then, is when in the last 99 years did Montana lose the power or interest sufficient to support the statute, if it ever did. If the statute has worked to preserve a degree of political and social autonomy is the State required to throw away its protections?” The majority went out of its way to note that unlimited campaign spending on judicial elections is also having a profoundly damaging effect on judicial integrity all around the country. 
 
 Two justices dissented from this view, insisting that the court was bound to follow the decision in Citizens United. But one of the two dissents, Justice James C. Nelson, unloaded on that Supreme Court decision with Scalia-like levels of derision and scorn. “Corporations are not persons,” writes Nelson. “Human beings are persons, and it is an affront to the inviolable dignity of our species that courts have created a legal fiction which forces people—human beings—to share fundamental, natural rights with soulless creatures of government." Just in case that wasn’t crystal clear, Nelson goes on to add that “while corporations and human beings share many of the same rights under the law, they clearly are not bound equally to the same codes of good conduct, decency, and morality, and they are not held equally accountable for their sins. Indeed, it is truly ironic that the death penalty and hell are reserved only to natural persons." 
 
 There’s a lot to love in both the majority opinion and Nelson’s heartfelt dissent. But as Eugene Volokh notes, the opinion practically begs to be overturned at the Supreme Court. (Dissenting Justice Nelson agrees and even says the court will summarily reverse it.) But whereas Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Citizens United seemed to be rooted in the thin vapors of his own aspirational First Amendment thinking, the Montana Supreme Court fixed its focus on the actual corrupting influence of the groups suing to overturn the ban. Thus Western Tradition Partnership, the lead plaintiff in the case, merits extra special scorn from the court for circulating a fundraising brochure that said, “If you decide to support this program, no politician, no bureaucrat, and no radical environmentalist will ever know you made this program possible.” The majority openly accuses WTP of being responsible for “a multi-front attack on both contribution restrictions and the transparency that accompanies campaign disclosure requirements.” The Montana majority, in other words, knows exactly what Justice Kennedy seems to have missed: That corruption is corruption regardless of its packaging, and that it rarely comes with a detailed disclosure label. 
 
 More fundamentally, the majority and one dissenter seem to understand perfectly how much the American people resent being lied to about the burning need for courts to step in to protect the oppressed voices of powerless corporate interests. As Judge Nelson wrote in dissent, “the notion that corporations are disadvantaged in the political realm is unbelievable. Indeed, it has astounded most Americans. The truth is that corporations wield enormous power in Congress and in state legislatures. It is hard to tell where government ends and corporate America begins: the transition is seamless and overlapping.”
– Montana's attorney general is fighting to preserve his state's ability to curb corporate political spending, and almost half of America's states are backing him. Some 22 states and the District of Columbia have filed a brief urging the Supreme Court not to use its Citizens United decision to strike down Montana's law limiting corporate money in politics, reports the Guardian. Montana's century-old Corrupt Practices Act, which was introduced to curb the power of copper barons, has been upheld by the state's highest court, putting it in conflict with Citizens United. The states, led by New York, argue that laws like Montana's are needed to prevent corruption at the state level. They say the court should reconsider some of its findings in the Citizens United case, arguing that the court was wrong when it claimed that unlimited independent political spending does not "give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption," AP reports. Experts say that while it is highly unlikely that the court will reconsider Citizens United, it may clarify the ruling to allow Montana's law to stand—or simply issue a ruling reversing Montana's decision to uphold its law.