Frequently Searched

Week in Review: Mississippi Stands Up for Non-Profits and Their Donors

March 31, 2019

March 31, 2019

Mississippi has become the latest state to protect the free-speech and associational rights of non-profit donors, a position that the Goldwater Institute has strongly advocated in capitols and courtrooms across the country. The new law protects charitable donors from having their names put on a government list, which would expose them to potential harassment and intimidation by their ideological opponents.

Since the 1950s, the Supreme Court has protected donors’ privacy when they contribute to nonprofits, ruling that government officials can’t force advocacy groups to turn over the identities of their supporters to public officials. But donor privacy has come under attack in cities like Santa Fe, New Mexico,and Denver, Colorado, where the cities have demanded that nonprofits give the government a list of their donors when they spend money communicating with voters about city ballot measures.The Goldwater Institute is standing in defense of nonprofit organizations, their donors, and the First Amendment by challenging those laws in court.

Read more about Mississippi’s new law here, and read about the 1958 U.S. Supreme Court case of NAACP v. Alabama, which upheld the constitutional right to donate anonymously to nonprofit organizations.

Arizona Acts to Ensure that Employees and Job-Seekers Know Their Rights

Thanks to the Right to Earn a Living Act developed by the Goldwater Institute, Arizona job-seekers enjoy some of the greatest protections from arbitrary occupational licensing restrictions in the country. Under that law, if the government wants to restrict a person’s right to earn an honest living, the burden is on the government, not the job-seeker, to prove that the restriction is appropriate. 

Unfortunately, some job-seekers do not know their rights and may be prevented from working in the job of their choice because of it. Thanks to a new law supported by the Goldwater Institute, employees and job-seekers are guaranteed to have a better sense of what their rights are under that law.

Read more about the new law on the In Defense of Libertyblog.

How Do You Fight Prejudice? Get Outside Your Bubble (and Big Cities)

You might expect cities to be bastions of tolerance in America—after all, they offer greater exposure to culture, not to mention the progressive politics frequently associated with open-mindedness. 

But it turns out that many cities and their environs are among the most politically prejudiced places in America—and that should tell us something about how we can all work to improve how we relate to one another.

Read more about it in a new article by Jennifer Tiedemann, the Deputy Director of Communications at the Goldwater Institute, in The Daily Caller.


 

 

More on this issue

Donate Now

Help all Americans live freer, happier lives. Join the Goldwater Institute as we defend and strengthen freedom in all 50 states.

Donate Now

Since 1988, the Goldwater Institute has been in the liberty business — defending and promoting freedom, and achieving more than 400 victories in all 50 states. Donate today to help support our mission.

We Protect Your Rights

Our attorneys defend individual rights and protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Need Help? Submit a case.

Get Connected to Goldwater

Sign up for the latest news, event updates, and more.

Wait! Don’t close this yet!

We are grateful for your support of the Goldwater Institute’s efforts to advance and defend liberty throughout the United States. For over 36 years, we’ve been defending the rights of Americans to live their lives free from government interference.

And Goldwater is unique in that we direct our efforts to the 50 states where we introduce and advance innovative ideas that expand freedom. And we fight in courtrooms and capitals nationwide to defend individual liberty.

In 2024 alone, we scored over 50 policy and litigation victories defending liberty!

And that’s just the beginning.

Our plans for 2025 include:

  • Stopping pernicious DEI and other woke programs in America’s universities.
  • Ensuring that patients suffering from rare and terminal diseases have access to cutting-edge, lifesaving medical treatments, without having to first seek permission from the government.
  • Defending parental rights across the United States so that parents can send their kids to the school that best fits their needs, free from leftist indoctrination.
  • Eliminating government interference in the fundamental right of individuals to own property and use it as they see fit.
  • And much, much more

We seek to restore the presumption of liberty; that people are free to act without first asking permission from the government.

But we cannot do this without you. Will you join us as we fight to preserve and advance liberty throughout the country? As we seek new and innovative ways to defend freedom in all 50 states?

And there’s great news: Thanks to a generous Goldwater supporter, your donation today will be doubled!

So please, join us in fighting to advance liberty and score real wins for freedom from coast to coast!