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 advocates will continue working with a few state legislators in Annapolis in 2011 to limit corporate money in elections by:
-Strengthening disclosure laws by ensuring Marylanders can determine who is paying for campaign materials and campaign ads.
-Establishing a public financing system which would encourage small campaign contributions from individuals as opposed to large, special interest donations.
-Closing the "LLC Loophole" that allows a company to set up multiple corporations for the purpose of making numerous campaign contributions above the intended legal limit.
And in Washington D.C., Lisa Gilbert, Democracy Advocate with U.S. PIRG, is working with leadership in Congress and the White House to pass legislation to blunt the worst impacts of the Citizens United v FEC decision.



