The Goldwater Institute’s 2026 is off to an extraordinary start. So far this year, we have worked with partners across the country to pass 14 bills expanding freedom and reining in government, with several additional reforms nearing the finish line. At the same time, we are advancing more than 100 bills across 32 states. And Goldwater attorneys are defending individual liberty through 40 active cases nationwide, including in six state supreme courts.
We’re holding local governments accountable, curtailing the administrative state, protecting patients’ right to try gene-based therapies, fighting illegal government mandates on small businesses, standing up for individuals’ freedom of speech, and ensuring public colleges and universities are educating—not indoctrinating—students.
Among the most significant reforms is Georgia’s Safe Neighborhoods Act, which addresses an increasingly urgent reality in too many cities: homelessness is growing, and local governments are refusing to enforce basic public safety laws, leaving residents and businesses to bear the cost. Under the Act, when local governments fail to enforce these laws and property owners suffer the consequences, those owners have the right to seek compensation.
Goldwater is also restoring constitutional limits on the administrative state—the unelected bureaucrats who impose regulations that restrict Americans’ ability to earn a living, build a home, or exercise their freedom of speech. Our judicial deference reform ensures that courts interpret the law independently, rather than deferring to administrative agencies. The reform has passed in Kansas, is pending in Georgia, and is gaining traction in New Hampshire.
But that’s not all. Read more about our 2026 successes here.
Americans should always be allowed to speak out about their government, so it’s entirely unacceptable when the government attempts to prohibit criticism. That’s why the Goldwater Institute filed a brief this week urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule the agency uses to silence its critics.
Under the SEC’s “gag rule,” if people being prosecuted for wrongful conduct in the buying and selling of securities agree to settle their case rather than go through a trial, they are forever prohibited from saying or even suggesting they are innocent. Under the non-negotiable rule, they’re allowed to praise the SEC but not criticize it and are effectively barred from monitoring and controlling what public servants are doing.
By striking down the “gag rule,” the Supreme Court can help restore a government of the people and by the people. In the meantime, the Goldwater Institute will continue to fight back whenever the administrative state attempts to wrest control of vast areas of life from the American people.
Across the country, leftist politicians are shutting down much-needed development in the name of environmental activism. One of the most egregious cases is in Arizona, where state bureaucrats instituted a water-restriction rule that effectively shut down housing construction in much of Maricopa County. But the Goldwater Institute fought back, and this week an Arizona court invalidated the government’s illegal rule.
Historically, builders in Maricopa have been able to obtain certificates showing there is a 100-year groundwater supply below their proposed development. But Gov. Katie Hobbs’ administration illegally imposed a new rule based on a flawed concept called “unmet demand” that required homebuilders to show a 100-year groundwater supply across the entire water management area—an area the size of Connecticut! The rule effectively strangled home construction in one of the nation’s fastest-growing residential markets.
But the Hobbs administration never had the authority to impose the rule on its own, and the Arizona Department of Water Resources didn’t bother complying with the state’s rulemaking process—it just asserted that this is what the law always required. That argument “lacks merit,” the judge declared in a tremendous victory for the Goldwater Institute anyone interested in solving Arizona’s housing crisis.
