A copycat or model bill is legislation that’s written with the intent to have it replicated in multiple states. Their sheer volume amounts to “the nation’s largest, unreported special interest campaign,” said ProPublica editor Michael Squires, who was one of The Arizona Republic reporters on the 2020 Goldsmith-winning project Copy. Paste. Legislate. “When a copycat bill changes hands, almost without exception, there is no reporting of that. There’s no documenting when that happens or who’s behind it or what they want, but that is influence in probably its purest form… literally trying to write a law.” (Video | Transcript)

Model bills may have a financial benefit, such as making it harder for asbestos victims to sue corporations, or ideological benefit, such as bills regarding critical race theory.

Caveats: Model legislation is not necessarily nefarious – for example, seat belt legislation is nearly identical in many states. Also, identical language doesn’t necessarily mean the bill was copied from elsewhere. For instance, most opioid legislation includes a standardized definition of opioids.

Who writes model legislation? Industry groups, corporations, think tanks, public interest law firms and advocates. One of the best known is ALEC, the conservative American Legislative ExcCouncil. Others include the Goldwater Institute, Heritage Action, WallBuilders, Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom and, on the left, State Innovation Exchange and ALICE (American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange.) “The left has been far less effective at using this than the right,” Squires said.

Why do state lawmakers introduce model bills? “Many states have part-time legislatures. They don’t have much staff. … They want to be able to point to something when they run for re-election,” Squires said. Model bills give them something “ready-made” and very often “ideologically aligned.” “Also, it gives them entrée into a world of political donors.”

How do you know if a bill in your state is model legislation? “If you see similar ideas coming up in different places … it’s probably not a coincidence, there’s probably a common point of origin,” Squires said. If you suspect a piece of legislation has model origins, you can use the Center for Public Integrity’s free tool to search by bill number, keyword or politician’s name. The tool will rank bills based on the number of identical strings of words.

Once you’ve found identical bills, how do you find who’s behind them? Preethak Rebala, the news developer behind CPI’s tool, recommends using LegiScan to find a bill’s sponsors and identify campaign contributions. “One of my favorite things about LegiScan is that if you pull the metadata … put it into Follow the Money, and it’ll give you all of the contributions for each individual representative, and so it’s super helpful when you’re trying to go from bill to sponsor to who’s funding them.”

Kristian Hernández, a reporter with Pew Stateline, previously with CPI, recommends shoe-leather reporting — calling lawmakers and lobbyists from both sides or going to see them. You might need to connect in person “because they don’t want a paper trail,” he said. Ask the lawmaker where the bill originated or directly if a special interest group was involved in drafting it. Other clues could come from lobbyists’ disclosures, expenditure filings and event reports and the speaker or guest lists at conferences hosted by industry or advocacy groups, he said. He also recommends searching committee testimony. Illinois, Maine and Nevada, for instance, allow you to search legislative committee minutes or transcripts for keywords, as these may contain talking points similar to the bill.

Some states have good websites and data that allow journalists to “triangulate” the players on various issues.

“For example, [in] Iowa, you can search for all the positions taken on bills by client or lobbyist,” Hernandez said. “Ii Wisconsin, you can search the bill, or topic, or budget or subject. In Massachusetts, you can search for lobbyists’ positions by bill number or description. . “In California, it has lists of lobbyist positions and lobbyist filings and in bill analysis.”

Hernandez sees countless opportunities for stories on model bills in every state. With the CPI tool and willing sources, “you could turn this around in a day if you needed to.”

Squires told reporters: “This game is still going.”

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