The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of two conservative groups that challenged a California requirement that tax-exempt charities provide the state the identities of their top financial donors. The justices, in a 6–3 ruling, sided with the two nonprofit groups—the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and the Thomas More Law Center—in finding that the California attorney general’s policy, in place for the past decade, violates the Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and association. The court’s six conservatives were in the majority, with its three liberal members dissenting. Democratic-governed California, the country’s most populous state, has said the donor information is required as part of the state attorney general’s duty to prevent charitable fraud. “We are left to conclude that the Attorney General’s disclosure requirement imposes a widespread burden on donors’ associational rights,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling. The state’s interest in “amassing sensitive …
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