A coalition of good-government groups are celebrating a legal victory over Governor Cuomo that would have required them to reveal the identity of their donors.

The groups, including the non-profit Citizens Union, filed a suit claiming the law was aimed at crippling them.

"This state law targeted not-for-profit good-government groups that have had the temerity to raise ethics issues and try to get the government to do better,” said Randy Mastro, an attorney for Citizens United. “That is blatantly unconstitutional."

In June of 2016, during the waning days of the Albany legislative session, Governor Cuomo held a press conference announcing a last-minute request that state lawmakers provide more clarity on the U.S. Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United.

"Citizens United said money talks. And big money talks louder," Cuomo said at the time.

Good-government groups were critical of the governor's proposal, which was bundled into a larger package of ethics reforms. Just six months earlier, the legislative leaders in both houses had been convicted of corruption.

The ethics reform package passed in the early morning hours of the final day of the legislative session, but it included new financial reporting requirements for good-government groups that had been critical of Cuomo. It required that the groups disclose their private donors.

"The first amendment protects both the right to speech and the right to association,” said Mastro. “Those things don't necessarily happen in a public setting. People choose to associate privately."

The groups sued and won this week when the reporting requirement was thrown out.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Cuomo sayid,  "Everyone preaches transparency until transparency shows up on their own front door. The question remains, what is the advocacy industrial complex hiding?"

As for why it took three years, Cuomo initially told the good-government groups that they would fix the law legislatively. That delayed the suit for a year, but Cuomo and the legislature never bothered to fix the law through legislation, and the suit moved forward.