Overview

Supreme Court Opinion Widens Corporate "Personhood" Rights

The Supreme Court decision in Citizen’s United vs. Federal Election Commission will significantly expand the role that the most powerful corporations play in election financing. (Click here to download a PDF of the decision.)

In a shocking burst of judicial activism, the Supreme Court decided that corporations should be treated in the same manner as ordinary citizens and be allowed to spend the massive amounts of money they accumulate on direct attack ads for or against members of Congress.

 “This egregious decision turns back the clock on over 60 years of precedent,” said Fielding Huseth for the Maryland Public Interest Research Group. 

“A corporation is not, nor has it ever been, a person with voting rights. Corporations are not the "We the People” our founding fathers were referring to," he added. “It is essential that we fix this misstep by the courts, before we see the landscape of elections financing washed away in a raging flash flood of corporate money.”

Lifting the ban on corporate money will further diminish the public voice in a system that already favors wealthy special interests and will certainly lessen the public trust in our officials.

Maryland PIRG is working with a few state legislators in Annapolis to limit corporate money in the 2010 elections by passing three good laws:

-The first bill would require companies to gain approval from two-thirds of shareholders to spend company money on political efforts.

—The second would prevent potential "pay to play" corruption by forbidding state contractors from making campaign expenditures on behalf of political candidates and their campaigns.

—The third aims to strengthen disclosure laws by ensuring Marylanders can determine who is paying for campaign materials and campaign ads. 

And in Washington D.C., Lisa Gilbert, Democracy Advocate with U.S. PIRG, is working with leadership in Congress and the White House to fix the problem nationally.