While Governor Hochul is vowing to protect the freedom of speech of Salman Rushdie, it turns out that New York has just fetched up as the worst in the nation in a new ranking of the states in terms of their freedom of political speech. The report is from the Institute for Free Speech, focused on protecting the right to organize and speak out in the political arena. It reckons the laws of no other state are more confining than New York’s.

It’s a devastating report. What makes it so newsworthy is that it’s from the group headed by Bradley Smith, a former Federal Election Commission chairman described by the New York Times as the “intellectual powerhouse” in the movement to roll back government overregulation of speech in politics. That drive led in 2010 to Citizens United v. FEC, in which the Supreme Court cast aside as unconstitutional curbs in the McCain-Feingold Act.

Mr. Smith contends that Citizens United, far from causing “a corporate takeover of democracy,” led to a flowering of political freedom. The ruling “made it easier to promote (or criticize) a candidate without help from party leaders or media elites.” He pointed to the rise of candidates as diverse as Senator Sanders and President Trump, both underwritten by small donors who proved that big money cannot “buy elections as predicted.”

The freedom of political speech that’s been vouchsafed at the federal level amounts to, the Institute says, “a dramatic restoration of First Amendment rights that few thought possible in so short a time.” Yet that progress is being undercut by a blanket of regulations emanating from the 50 state capitals. Such rules are often geared to, the Institute writes, “reducing political competition and driving dissenting voices from the debate.” 

Rolling back this web of regulation means restoring to citizens such basic liberties as, the Institute marks, “the right to engage in grassroots advocacy campaigns,” to “join with fellow citizens” in “political committees,” to present “political messages free from government interference,” and to push “for the election or defeat of candidates” and causes “without fear of government retribution.”

Returning these First Amendment freedoms will empower “citizens to criticize, challenge, and ultimately improve their government,” the Institute says. Nowhere is the need more acute than in the Empire State, which leads the nation in “restrictions on citizen political engagement,” Mr. Smith reckons. New Yorkers, he says, can “ask themselves if they feel that these restrictions have led to ‘good government.’”

It’s hard to imagine anyone answering that question in the affirmative. “Good government,” Mr. Smith explains, “does not go hand-in-hand with regulation of citizen political activity.” A more realistic rationale for New York’s curbs on political speech is to prop up the one-party rule in the state. “The complex maze of laws,”Mr. Smith writes, “allows government officials to avoid the accountability that comes from citizen activism.”

The Institute’s index assigns New York a grade of just 15 percent, dead last in a list topped by Wisconsin, with 86 percent. New York’s worst fault, the Institute says, is its treatment of campaign spending and political committees. The Institute contends “No citizen or group should have to register or report to the government” just “to spend a few hundred dollars” on political flyers or ads in favor, or against, a candidate or issue. 

New York’s law defining a political action committee, the Institute says, is the nation’s “worst,” because of its “unclear definition.” The law’s terms “are hopelessly vague,” and offer citizens who want to wade into political debates and campaigns “nothing but confusion,” the Institute notes. “Groups cannot possibly know where the line between public policy and candidate advocacy is drawn,” making it necessary to hire “costly legal counsel.”

New York is among the states with paperwork and reporting rules for political spending and organization at the grass-roots, meaning “the burdens of filing these complex forms will exceed the amount the group spends.” Spending just $1,000 in a local race triggers reporting requirements as a Political Action Committee in New York. One reason for New York’s low ranking is that its laws “regulate grassroots advocacy so harshly,” the Institute explains.

We haven’t heard any comment on any of this from Ms. Hochul. In recent days she’s preferred to talk about the attack on Mr. Rushdie’s “free expression of thought.” She vows to protect New Yorkers’ “freedom to speak and to write truth.” Yet she overlooks what Mr. Smith’s group calls “the speech-chilling impact” of her state’s laws curbing political speech. The solution, the Institute writes, is simple: “Follow the Constitution.”