## Facts

- Maryland regulated charitable solicitation by barring charitable organizations from paying or incurring fundraising expenses exceeding 25% of funds raised for a campaign.
- The statute allowed the Secretary of State to waive the cap if it would effectively prevent the organization from raising contributions.
- Joseph H. Munson Company, Inc., a professional fundraising firm, contracted with charitable organizations for campaigns in which fees could exceed the statutory cap.
- A charitable client was reluctant to continue using Munson because of the cap, and the Secretary of State warned Munson that noncompliance could result in prosecution.
- Munson sought declaratory and injunctive relief, bringing a facial First Amendment overbreadth challenge.
- Maryland trial and intermediate appellate courts upheld the statute; the state’s highest court reversed, finding standing and holding the statute unconstitutional.

## Issues

1. Whether a professional fundraiser has standing to assert a facial First Amendment overbreadth challenge based on the rights of its charitable clients.
2. Whether Maryland’s 25% fundraising-expense cap, even with a discretionary waiver, is facially overbroad because it unconstitutionally restricts protected charitable solicitation.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment invalidating the statute.
- Munson had Article III standing because the statute caused threatened and actual injury, including the risk of enforcement and harm to business relationships.
- Prudential limits on third-party standing did not bar the suit because charitable solicitation is central to Munson’s work and its interests aligned with the charities’ speech interests.
- The 25% cap was facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment, and the waiver provision did not cure the defect.

## Legal Principles

- Charitable solicitation is protected by the First Amendment because it is intertwined with informational and persuasive expression.
- In First Amendment overbreadth cases, courts may relax prudential standing limits to permit litigants to raise the rights of others when a law’s existence may deter protected expression.
- A fixed percentage cap on fundraising costs is constitutionally suspect when it treats fundraising “efficiency” as a proxy for fraud and restricts solicitation on that basis.
- The state must pursue anti-fraud and donor-protection interests through measures that are more closely fitted to those interests, such as disclosure, recordkeeping, and targeted prohibitions on misrepresentation.
- A discretionary waiver does not save a speech-burdening percentage limit where the core restriction is invalid and the waiver process itself risks deterrence of protected solicitation.

## Conclusion

The Court held that a professional fundraiser could bring a facial overbreadth challenge and invalidated Maryland’s 25% fundraising-expense cap because it broadly restricted protected charitable solicitation based on fundraising ratios rather than narrowly targeting fraud, and the waiver mechanism did not remedy the constitutional defect.


Secretary of State of Md. v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947 (1984)