Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed legislation late Sunday that would have forced presidential candidates to make their tax returns public before appearing on the California ballot. | Rich Pedroncelli/AP Efforts to pry loose Trump tax returns hit a wall California Gov. Jerry Brown warns against 'slippery slope precedent.'

LOS ANGELES — Efforts to pry loose President Donald Trump’s tax returns at the state level have hit a wall, stalling in statehouses across the country including in California, a hotbed of anti-Trump resistance.

Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed legislation late Sunday that would have forced presidential candidates to make their tax returns public before appearing on the California ballot, marking the death there of a measure once ballyhooed by Democrats and open government advocates as an end run to Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax filings.


Democrats have seen similar proposals stall in more than 20 states since Trump’s election. But Brown’s veto here — in a deeply liberal state where Democrats control every statewide office and both houses of the Legislature — marked a new low for the offensive.

Breaking with lawmakers of his own party, Brown said in a veto message that despite “the political attractiveness — even the merits — of getting President Trump’s tax returns, I worry about the political perils of individual states seeking to regulate presidential elections in this manner.

“First, it may not be constitutional,” he wrote. “Second, it sets a ‘slippery slope’ precedent. Today we require tax returns, but what would be next? Five years of health records? A certified birth certificate? High school report cards? And will these requirements vary depending on which political party is in power?”

The veto was not unexpected, and lawmakers from Hawaii to New Hampshire and Massachusetts were preparing to redouble their efforts later this year or in 2018. But despite a barrage of proposals at the federal and state level, Trump’s tax returns remain out of view.

“I would think that Californians, like New Yorkers … want to honor the 40-year tradition of presidential candidates releasing their tax returns,” said New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman, whose own measure stalled in Trump’s home state.

“We have a Republican-controlled state Senate, which has been the stumbling block in my chamber for passage,” he said.

In other states, some Democrats have raised concerns similar to Brown’s, both about the constitutionality of the measure and about the potential to create a “slippery slope” of requirements for presidential contenders.

Hoylman said he had encouraged former Harvard Law School classmate Scott Wiener, a California state senator, to move forward with legislation in California, hoping for a “watershed moment” in the nation’s most populous state. But with Brown’s veto appearing increasingly likely last week, Hoylman called the anticipated outcome “really disappointing.”

Democrats have been gunning for Trump’s tax returns since the 2016 election, when Trump became the first president in decades not to disclose his tax returns. And with Republicans blocking efforts to force their disclosure at the federal level, many Democrats turned to the states.

By March, lawmakers in 23 states had introduced measures to force presidential candidates to release their recent tax filings, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But some Democrats questioned the legality of compelling disclosure, and in Republican-controlled statehouses, the measure was doomed.

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Vetoing a tax disclosure bill in New Jersey in May, Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a supporter of Trump, called the measure unconstitutional and a “transparent political stunt.”

In California, tax-disclosure advocates found a governor highly critical of Trump. But Brown, a fourth-term Democrat, has also rejected similar disclosures of his own: In a break with long-standing tradition of gubernatorial candidates in California, Brown did not release his own tax returns in 2010 or during his reelection campaign in 2014.

In a veto message released just before midnight — California's bill-signing deadline — Brown said he hesitated “to start down a road that well might lead to an ever escalating set of differing state requirements for presidential candidates.”

The bill Brown vetoed would have required, as a condition for appearing on the primary ballot, that presidential candidates file copies of their five most recent tax returns with state officials. The state, in turn, would make them public.

The legality of states requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns has long been in doubt. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that states cannot add to the qualifications for U.S. Senate or House members, and California’s own legislative counsel had released an opinion casting doubt on the constitutionality of the presidential disclosure bill.

But some legal experts had been more encouraging of the legislation, including former ethics lawyers for President Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Richard Hasen, an election law expert at University of California, Irvine, said in an email that Brown’s veto would amount to a “setback” for the state-level effort.

But he said, “I doubt it would stop other states with heavy Democratic majorities from trying. If any succeed, no doubt the matter will end up in the courts.”

But state-level Democrats first have to get a bill enacted. Hawaii state Rep. Chris Lee, who introduced a tax-disclosure bill in Hawaii, said that with three years until the next presidential election, “I don’t think anybody’s trying to rush anything.” And Massachusetts state Sen. Mike Barrett, who is carrying a tax-disclosure bill in his state, said a veto from Brown “doesn’t mean that Jerry Brown is the U.S. Supreme Court. It doesn’t mean that he substitutes" for "justices who do this full time.”

“It is true that in the short term, nothing seems to be happening on presidential tax return disclosure,” Barrett said. “But it wouldn’t take much for the midterm trend to look extremely promising.”

In addition to efforts by Democrats in the nation’s statehouses, plaintiffs in a handful of lawsuits across the country have said they will seek to obtain Trump’s filings, including in several cases targeting Trump’s foreign business ties and a case in which protesters claim Trump incited violence against them at a campaign rally.

But the prospects of obtaining Trump’s tax records in court are as murky as they are in state legislatures. Greg Belzley, an attorney for protesters seeking Trump’s tax records in a Kentucky case, said, “Hell, man. If I had the slightest idea of where things were going in this country, or what’s going on, I’d be a millionaire.”

Democratic lawmakers have argued that reviewing Trump’s taxes has become more significant amid ongoing questions about Trump’s ties to Russia and as Trump and Republicans strive to make changes to the tax code — a position that appears to carry weight with the American public. According to a recent Morning Consult/POLITICO poll, a plurality of American voters — 49 percent — say Trump should release his tax returns before any tax return proposal moves forward.

Trump has said he would not release his returns because they were being audited by the IRS, though the IRS has said there is no regulation prohibiting someone from making their returns public while under audit.

Yet absent legislation to force Trump’s hand, it could be years before his filings are disclosed — if they ever are.

“The only ones who care about my tax returns are the reporters,” Trump said at a news conference in January.

