Citizens United Opinion Widens Corporate “Personhood” Rights
WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 - Today’s 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.
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 Jon Bartholomew, Policy Advocate for the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG).
“A corporation is not, nor has it ever been, a person with voting rights. Corporations are not your neighbors, they cannot get married, they cannot die, and a corporation is not part of "We the People,” 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 flashflood of corporate money.”
This decision could lead to dramatic increases in spending on Oregon’s Congressional and US Senate campaigns. Any corporation in America could decide to try to influence our elections and flood millions of dollars into attack ads in Oregon, well beyond any spending our state has yet seen.
Lifting the ban on corporate money could further diminish the public voice in a system that already favors moneyed special interests, and will certainly lessen the public trust in our officials.
U.S. PIRG and OSPIRG are working in concert with the White House and Senate and House Leadership to help move a legislative fix to slam shut the floodgates that today’s decision has opened.
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OSPIRG is a leading non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organization that takes on powerful interests on behalf of its members. On the web at www.ospirg.org.
