In 2025, Texas, Nebraska, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma enacted state-level foreign agent registration and disclosure regimes that were loosely modeled on the federal Foreign Agents Registration Act. And in the first few months of 2026, several states — Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Missouri and West Virginia, to name a few — have already introduced similar bills.
The practice of requiring disclosure of efforts to influence state policy is nothing new. All states and Washington, D.C., have lobbying laws. Moreover, the legislative impulse to regulate foreign influence is easy to understand, particularly when it is framed around addressing activities by entities from so-called hostile foreign countries or countries of concern.
However, this article, published in Law360, explains why the state-level “baby FARA” laws focusing on foreign influence efforts present several unique constitutional challenges, and highlight questions about how far states can and should extend regulatory tools beyond traditional lobbying regimes to capture a wide range of foreign‑affiliated activity.