On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court majority decided Citizens United v. FEC . It held that the 1st Amendment, which prohibits the government from abridging the freedom of speech, protected corporations and Super PACs by defining their unlimited power to fund political campaigns as “speech.”
The decision handed the wealthiest Americans oversized control over how America was governed and planted the seed that grew into the widest wealth spread in American history. For example, Trump’s signed into law a 4.5 trillion-dollar tax bill which provided that the country would recover the lost revenues by cutting the safety nets that lower-earners depend on, such as Medicare, Medicaid and food programs.
Disavowing 89 years of precedent, the majority labored mightily to justify its finding that corporations and Super PACs – believe it or not — “speak” when they spend money to fund political campaigns. Alas, we all thought that only humans and parrots can speak.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent, “The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons … is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s” decision.
The majority justified its holding that corporations can speak because “they are associations of humans, which makes no sense. Corporations often contradict their human shareholders’ beliefs when they fund candidates and policies their shareholders oppose. As Justice Stevens said, “Nor does [the majority] tell us when a corporation may engage in electioneering that some of its shareholders oppose.”
Moreover, the Supreme Court previously held that state corporate law – not federal law — a corporation’s governing structure, and ordered federal courts to defer to state law. And it’s been that way for more than two centuries.
When a state withholds the power to fund political campaigns, campaign funding is unauthorized and void; it doesn’t exist. So there’s nothing to protect. Federal law is mostly regulatory and prohibitory, limiting the exercise of corporate power. It does not bestow powers on corporations.
Readers have to wonder why the majority labored so hard to reach its conclusion. One answer is that the concurrences of Justices Scalia, Thomas and Roberts, was necessary to carry the decision. Their willingness to stretch the Constitution to accommodate the Republican party was evident when they joined Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett to become the current Supreme Court majority.
Citizens United was decided by the Republican majority and turned Republican power into law. The decision was followed by a flood of campaign spending by corporations and Super PACs that spent $1,755 trillion on Republican campaigns in the 2024 election cycle while they spent $.787 trillion on Democratic campaigns. Moreover, two-thirds of business’s (including corporations) spending funded Republican campaigns. It worked. 90% of it went to Republican winners.
The Court’s majority concluded that large spending on campaigns doesn’t increase corruption or cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy. Wrong on both counts. 66 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Democrats back a constitutional amendment overruling Citizens United. Also, a majority of Americans (55%) consider corruption in government a major cause of their loss of trust.
Ever since Roberts became chief justice in 2005, his main objectives have been clear: to empower corporate America and help Republicans consolidate power. It wasn’t too long before he added the priority of accommodating Trump’s march to autocracy.
Indeed, led by Roberts, the Republican Majority appears ready to transfer enormous amounts of power from Congress to the Republican President, which would brazenly violate a clear legislative prohibition as well as the Constitutions mandates for separation of powers, checks and balances and three independent branches of government.
Yes, folks. This is where we’ve come – a Supreme Court with pernicious political holdings that rival Constitutional ones, Congressional Republicans who’ve checked their spines at the Capitol doors, and a sociopathic President whose obsession with self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement precludes any focus on what’s best for America.
The only feasible solution is to replace Trump’s enslave Republicans with Republicans not afraid of him, or by Democrats. We’d relish in overdue bipartisan legislating.
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