Supreme Court rejects limits on corporate spending on political campaigns

[Jacpher]

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday swept aside decades of legislative restrictions on the role of corporations in political campaigns, ruling that companies can dip into their treasuries to spend as much as they want to support or oppose individual candidates.

 

The decision shakes the foundation of corporate limitations on federal and state elections that stretch back a century, and prompted sharp partisan reaction. Republican leaders, still celebrating Tuesday's Senate upset in Massachusetts, cheered the ruling as a victory for free speech and predicted a surge in corporate support for GOP candidates in November's midterm elections.

 

President Obama sharply criticized the ruling, however, calling it "a green light to a new stampede of special interest money," and vowed to "develop a forceful response" with congressional leaders from both parties. The court's decision was handed down on the same morning that Obama riled Wall Street by proposing tough new restrictions on the nation's largest banks.

 

"It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans," the president said in a statement.

 

In a 5-4 decision, the majority cast its ruling as a spirited defense of the First Amendment, concluding that corporations have the same rights as individuals when it comes to political speech. Corporations had been banned since 1947 from using their profits to endorse or oppose political candidates, a restriction that the justices ruled unconstitutional.

 

"When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought," the court said in a decision written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. "This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves."

 

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[Naxar Nugaaleed]

if corporations are people with constitutional rights as the supreme court suggest, then why are people allowed to buy other people?