Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-251_p86b.pdf
Page Number: 50

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

21 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

ton State Republican Party, 552 U. S. 442, 450 (2008).  Spec-
ulation is all the Court has.  The Court points to not a single
piece of record evidence showing that California’s reporting
requirement will chill “a substantial number” of top donors
from giving to their charities of choice.11  Yet it strikes the 
requirement down in every application. 

The  average  donor  is  probably  at  most  agnostic  about 
having their information confidentially reported to Califor-
nia’s attorney general.  A significant number of the chari-
ties registered in California engage in uncontroversial pur-
suits.  They  include  hospitals  and  clinics;  educational 
institutions;  orchestras,  operas,  choirs,  and  theatrical
groups; museums and art exhibition spaces; food banks and 
other organizations providing services to the needy, the el-
derly, and the disabled; animal shelters; and organizations 
that help maintain parks and gardens.  Brief for Public Cit-
izen et al. as Amici Curiae 12–13.  It is somewhat hard to 
fathom  that  donors  to  the  Anderson  Elementary  School 
PTA,  the  Loomis-Eureka  Lakeside  Little  League,  or  the 
Santa Barbara County Horticultural Society (“[c]elebrating 
plants since 1880”) are less likely to give because their do- 

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11 The  Court  highlights  the  “filings  of  hundreds  of  organizations  as 
amici curiae in support of ” petitioners in this suit.  Ante, at 17.  Those 
briefs, of course, are not record evidence.  Moreover, even if those organ-
izations had each provided evidence that California’s reporting require-
ment would subject their top donors to harassment and reprisals (they
did not), this still would not demonstrate that a substantial proportion
of  the  reporting  requirement’s  applications  are  unconstitutional  when
“ ‘judged in relation to [its] plainly legitimate sweep.’ ”  United States v. 
Stevens, 559 U. S. 460, 473 (2010).  Some 60,000 charities renew their 
registrations with California each year, and nearly all must file a Sched-
ule B.  See ante, at 13.  The amici are just a small fraction of the disclo-
sure requirement’s reach.