Turns out “corporations are not people” makes a better slogan than a constitutional amendment.
A month after 64 Vermont towns passed town meeting day resolutions opposing corporate personhood and the Citizens United court ruling, a joint resolution to that effect finally passed out of committee in Montpelier.
J.R.S. 11, which emerged from committee this week, urges Congress to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealing Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that spawned super PACs and gave corporations permission to spend unlimited sums in elections. The full Senate takes up the resolution next week.
If it passes, Vermont would join legislatures in Hawaii, New Mexico, Alaska, Iowa, Maryland and California in opposing Citizens United.
As originally proposed in January 2011, the resolution stated that “corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States or any of its jurisdictional subdivisions.” But constitutional lawyers warned the Senate Government Operations Committee that simply declaring that corporations are not people — and therefore shouldn’t have the same constitutional rights — could have the unintended consequence of stripping constitutional protections from churches, newspapers or any other entity set up as a corporation.
The final version still declares that “money is not speech” and “corporations are not persons” but lawmakers added this clause to the resolution as a safeguard: “The General Assembly does not support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would abridge the constitutional rights of any person or organization including freedom of religion or freedom of the press.”
Sen. Anthony Pollina (P/D-Washington) doesn’t think the added language was necessary but supported the final version because he feels the resolution sends a “very strong” signal to Washington.
“We’re not writing a constitutional amendment,” Pollina said yesterday outside the legislator lounge at the capitol. “We’re simply sending a strong message that Vermonters are increasingly angry with money in politics and the power of corporations to dictate policy and control our lives.”
The resolution doesn’t just oppose Citizens United; it would also put the Legislature on record against Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 Supreme Court case that equated money with speech in elections. The Citizens decision went even further by effectively denying the Congress or legislatures legal authority to regulate independent corporate expenditures in elections. The Vermont resolution seeks to restore those rights.
Pollina acknowledged that the Congress isn’t likely to amend the Constitution “because Vermont asked them to.” But by passing the symbolic resolution, he said, Vermont shows leadership.
Sen. Peter Galbraith (D-Windham), who serves on the committee that worked on the resolution, voted for it. But he called it a “meaningless resolution.” Far more significant, Galbraith said, would be passing a ban on corporate contributions to Vermont candidates, as he has proposed doing. A campaign finance reform bill that passed the Senate last year is stuck in the rules committee — and shows no signs of moving this year — because Galbraith has said he was attaching a floor amendment banning corporations from donating directly to Vermont political candidates.
Sen. Ginny Lyons (D-Chittenden, pictured) is the lead sponsor of the resolution. Asked if she was happy with the final product, Lyons said, “I think I am. It endorses what the towns have done.” Lyons believes the resolution has the potential to make real change because it puts the issue in the news. She said it already has had an impact.
“When we started this last year, it wasn’t Bernie’s issue. But it has become his issue because people are so angry about Citizens United,” Lyons said, referring to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has introduced a constitutional amendment, called the “Saving American Democracy Amendment,” that would overturn the court ruling.
Lyons said that U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and U.S. Representative Peter Welch (D-VT) have also embraced solutions to the spending spree unleashed by Citizens. They’ve sponsored the DISCLOSE Act, which would prevent government contractors from making expenditures in elections and establish better disclosuer requirements for campaign spending.
This article appears in The Money Issue April 2012 (Theme Issue).
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I understand the sentiment but you’ll only drive the money underground where it will be harder to track and account for.
Ginny Lyons is the fossilized equivalent in the Vermont Senate of Patrick Leahy in the US Senate. It’s time for some new blood.
Andy Bromage is dead wrong when he asserts that “Corporations are not people” makes a better slogan than a constitutional amendment. And Galbraith is just as wrong when he claims that Vermont’s resolution is meaningless.
This resolution, coupled with the grassroots Town Meeting resolutions, and together with the growing number of other states and municipalities, thousands of small businesses, and 79% of Americans of all political persuasions (including significant majorities of Democrats, Independents and Republicans, according to a Hart Research survey last year) who support such a change, marks the first time since 1971 that America has voiced overwhelming interest in a Constitutional amendment. The rest of the 2012 presidential campaign season will make it even more clear to citizens just how essential such a shift toward popular democracy will be.
Once an amendment is proposed by Congress, the average time for ratification has been less than two years. Never in a generation has the moment been so propitious to make a fundamental change that no Congress and no Supreme Court can overturn. The constitutional amendment is called the People’s Veto over all three branches of government. It is time we stand up and take back the power we’ve given away.
Andy’s view, and that of many contitutional scholars and average thinking people, is absolutely right. This amendment addresses a particular problem with a nuclear bomb, and would sweep away all kinds of rights we take for granted every day. Under this thoughtless amendment, even the smallest, most local, friendliest, and most benign business organization, such as a mom and pop corporation that owns a Vermont general store, or bed and breakfast, or dairy farm, or sugar shack, or restaurant, would suddently have no legal protections under the constitution. They would not be able to sue to enforce a simple contract.
This is a very thoughtless reaction to the issue of getting corporations out of political life and getting money out of politics, both of which I totally agree with. There are more thoughtful ways of doing that.
If corporations aren’t people, and the Vermont Consititution specifically taxes “citizens” then exactly how can we collect taxes on Corporations? Seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Otherwise it would seem to be a taxation without representation deal and I’m not sure that’s a slope I want to start down. Not over a few extra campaign ads. Afterall, reallly what this is all about is corps influencing campaigns, which is basically saying the average american is too stupid and lazy to research and thing for themselves. I don’t think, removing corporate personhood for the purpose of campaign funds is going to change that.
As the Vermont Senate resolution does not address spending by individual people and only attacks corporations it does not go far enough to provide for democratic elections. And as it attacks corporations in a way that will not overturn Citizens United, Buckley v. Valeo, and several other cases allowing corporate spending in elections, the resolution is off target even with respect to corporations.
The law established by the 5-4 majority of Supreme Court justices in Citizens United has nothing to do with corporate personhood. Therefore a constitutional amendment revoking corporate personhood, as requested in the Vermont resolution, would not change the result in Citizens United. The Washington DC fund-raising organization Public Citizen that sent an organizer into Vermont to generate support for placing the town meeting votes on the warning in the 65 towns has it wrong, and they misled many people in our state.
What Public Citizen did get correct was that the Supreme Court equated spending money in elections with protected free speech rights. But Citizens United was not decided based on the right of the corporate speaker. The decision was actually based on the right of the voter, a human being, to hear from all sources. Removing corporate personhood may remove rights from corporations but it will not remove the right of the voter to hear from all sources, including the corporation. Only the portion of the Vermont resolution that declares that money is not speech is relevant to overturning Citizens United.
In Citizens United, the Supreme Court affirmed Congressional legislation that restricted direct contributions to candidates but overturned law that prohibited or restricted independent expenditures that were not coordinated with the candidate. For both types of spending the court did the usual First Amendment analysis that considers the harm done by the form of speech. As to direct contributions, the court found potential for corruption. Illogically, and contrary to extensive congressional findings, the court asserted no such harm from independent expenditures by corporations and individuals.
Congress has not been prohibited from restricting or preventing speech on a long list of items, including insider trading tips, soliciting prostitution, child pornography, and direct contributions to candidates. The present election demonstrates that both direct contributions and supposedly independent expenditures are equally corrupting and independent expenditures should be added to the list.
The problem is the 5 member majority of the Supreme Court who are determined to maintain and expand the power of the 1% by creating the fiction that independent expenditures are not corrupting. Their decision in Citizens United has nothing to do with corporate personhood, and a campaign bringing in corporate personhood is misleading, divisive, and counterproductive. A movement focused on the wrong target is unlikely to achieve the goal of removing private money from elections.
For Vermont to play a helpful role in the current crisis of democracy we need to focus on the straightforward demand that Congress and state legislatures remove private money–including private money from individuals and from corporations–from election financing. Bringing in corporate personhood introduces an irrelevant target and diverts from this goal.
Corporations aren’t people:Soylent Green is people. Duh.