You may not follow Supreme Court rulings, but you may have seen the video clip of Justice Alito shaking his head during President Obama’s State of the Union address a few weeks ago. Or you may know that the controversial ruling to lift spending limits on corporate campaign donations has caused a political firestorm. It has dramatically changed the landscape on donations.

But why should you, as a shareholder, care? Transparency, or lack thereof, just became more important.

Now that corporations have no ceiling on political donations, shareholders’ ability to have transparency on those donations becomes critical. However, most corporations do not offer any transparency to their owners on this issue. One of the Advocates participating on Moxy Vote, the Center for Political Accountability, fights to change this. They ask corporations to simply disclose all of their political spending. Not stop – just disclose.

As a result of this ruling, my guess is that Bruce Freed and Maureen O’Brien at the CPA are going to be very busy this year!