“Corporations Are Not People”: Jayapal Files Bill to Reverse “Citizens United”

Authored by truthout.org and submitted by Ok-Figure5775

The proposal specifies that corporations do not have the same constitutional rights as individuals.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) has introduced a bill that would end corporate personhood with the goal of reversing Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the infamous Supreme Court decision that has unleashed a flood of corporate “dark money” into the U.S. election system, threatening to undermine democracy altogether.

The We the People Amendment, introduced in the House with 26 cosponsors, proposes a Constitutional Amendment that would establish that only people — not “artificial entities” like lobbying groups and corporations — have rights given by the Constitution. This would undercut the root of the Citizens United decision, in which Supreme Court justices ruled that limiting political spending from corporations constitutes a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.

“Corporations are not people and money is not speech,” Jayapal said in a statement. “In every election cycle since the disastrous Citizens United decision, we have seen more and more special interest dark money poured into campaigns across the country. My We the People Amendment returns the power to the people by finally ending corporate constitutional rights, reversing Citizens United, and ensuring that our democracy is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people — not corporations.”

Overturning Citizens United has been a longtime goal of progressive lawmakers and advocates, who have warned that the vast and growing influence of corporations and billionaires on elections is destroying what semblance of democracy the U.S. has.

Ever since the 2010 decision, the amount of outside spending on elections has increased precipitously in every election cycle, with a direct effect on election results; last year’s midterm elections were the most expensive in history, while the vast majority of House races were won by the biggest spender. At the state level, this is causing an extreme lurch to the right within state legislatures, fueling the GOP’s unprecedented fights against abortion access, public education and LGBTQ rights.

Jayapal’s bill is similar in aim to the Democracy for All Act, a bill introduced in January, also sponsored by Jayapal, with the same goal of ending Citizens United. However, the bills vary in their mechanisms.

As Move to Amend, a sponsor of the bill, explains in a fact sheet, the We the People Amendment goes slightly further than the Democracy For All Act.

The We the People Amendment would seek to end corporate personhood at the federal level, which the Democracy For All Act doesn’t address, according to the fact sheet. And We the People would create a mandate to limit contributions and expenditures, including for self-funding candidates, while Democracy for All only specifies that Congress and state legislators “may” create such limits.

“Rep. Jayapal clearly understands that the changes she and many of her colleagues support to advance health care, expand economic justice, ensure a livable world, and promote real democracy are incredibly difficult but necessary. This is especially true given the unjustifiable Supreme Court decisions declaring corporations as entities with many of the same constitutional rights as human persons and that money spent in elections is equivalent to First Amendment-protected free speech,” Dolores Guernica, Move to Amend legislative co-director, said in a statement.

“The exponential growth of corporate power and corrupting political influence from huge sums of money flooding elections can only be solved with a systemic solution that is equivalent in scale to these systemic problems — the We the People Amendment, which will end all corporate constitutional rights and money as free speech,” Guernica continued.

Jayapal has introduced the We the People Amendment before, in 2021, and Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff (California) has been reintroducing Democracy for All since 2013. However, there is little motivation for mainstream politicians on either side of the aisle to push back on Citizens United, likely in part because both major parties leverage dark money to defeat progressive and left-leaning candidates.

​​Not everyone can pay for the news. But if you can, we need your support. Truthout is widely read among people with lower ­incomes and among young people who are mired in debt. Our site is read at public libraries, among people without internet access of their own. People print out our articles and send them to family members in prison — we receive letters from behind bars regularly thanking us for our coverage. Our stories are emailed and shared around communities, sparking grassroots mobilization. We’re committed to keeping all Truthout articles free and available to the public. But in order to do that, we need those who can afford to contribute to our work to do so. We’ll never require you to give, but we can ask you from the bottom of our hearts: Will you donate what you can, so we can continue providing journalism in the service of justice and truth?

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

gmb92 on April 4th, 2023 at 22:31 UTC »

Reminder that in this 5-4 decision, those who ruled to allow unlimited special interest money in politics were all Republican-nominated justices. 3 of the 4 dissenters were Democrat-nominated justices. The other was Justice Stevens, appointed by President Ford, but widely considered an independent justice. It's a popular argument among the "both parties are the same" crowd, or among Republicans who disagree with the decision but want to believe Democrats are the same, that since both parties take advantage of the same rules that are i place, neither will change it, which is disingenuous. Only one party is trying to change it and only one party has a consistent record of rejecting increased special interest money in politics. The more years Democrats control of the Senate and presidency, the more likely this is to change, getting judges confirmed that will more likely allow the courts to revisit it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

Skooma_Lite on April 4th, 2023 at 22:22 UTC »

I'd be perfectly happy if this happened.

Call me old fashioned but corporations are so insanely clearly not people and the damage from this has been catastrophic.

Royal-Albatross420 on April 4th, 2023 at 22:14 UTC »

Corporations need to be put in check.

We created laws to give us freedom in pubic but we are entering an era of corporate controlled spaces and we don't have freedom within this spaces