January 27, 2010
Free Speech Department
Money Isn't Speech?
Let me run a few legislative proposals past you:
- We should make it illegal for anybody to receive money in return for performing an abortion. This would in no way impair a woman's right to choose, because money is not choice.
- The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution clearly reserves the right to bear arms to "the people," therefore it is not a violation of the right to bear arms to prohibit corporations from making or distributing guns.
Does either of those statements seem reasonable to you?
Then how come so many people think it makes sense to respond to the Citizens United ruling---which struck down restrictions on corporate spending for political advertising---by saying the original laws didn't violate the First Amendment because "Corporations aren't people, and money isn't speech"?
6 Comments
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They're kinda non-sequiturs.
I believe that corporations shouldn't be treated as people, constitutionally, but that boat has long sailed.
You say non-sequitur, I say analogy that reveals the faulty thinking behind the "corporations should not have the same rights as people" mantra.
To some extent, I agree that corporations should not have the same rights as people. However, corporations are made of people, and those people shouldn't lose any of their rights just because they have decided to coordinate their actions through the legal fiction of a corporation (or other legal entity).
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We should make it illegal for churches organized as 501(c)(3) to host religious services.
That's another one. Churches are corporations, why should they have the same religious freedom as real people?