A case of corporate ‘speech’

The U.S. Supreme Court this week appeared poised to wipe away century-old limits on corporate campaign spending. During arguments in a case that could transform national politics, several justices voiced sympathy for the argument that it’s a violation of free speech to limit how much corporations, unions, and interest groups can spend on campaigns. The case stems from a 2008 ruling that barred a conservative organization from distributing a scathing documentary about Hillary Clinton.

The court originally took up the matter in March, but in an unusual move, it called for additional arguments—a sign that the five-member conservative majority could be ready to overturn all or most limits on corporate political spending. Comments from justices this week did little to change that impression. “We don’t put our First Amendment rights in the hands of bureaucrats,” Justice Antonin Scalia declared. Chief Justice John Roberts scoffed at an Obama administration lawyer’s contention that restrictions were needed to protect shareholders who disagree with a company’s political positions, calling that argument “extraordinarily paternalistic.”

The justices could be on the verge of “surrendering control of our democracy to corporate interests,” said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post. That may sound “melodramatic,” but the stakes are that high. Since 1907, federal law has barred corporations from directly funding campaigns, because otherwise, already powerful interests could fill Congress with handpicked lackeys. “If corporations are allowed to spend their own treasure on elections,” said The New York Times in an editorial, “it would usher in an unprecedented age of special-interest politics.”

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Nonsense, said Steve Simpson in Realclearpolitics.com. Campaign-spending limits don’t work, because money always finds its way into campaigns—hence the advent of political action committees, “soft money,” and so on. Besides, “speech costs money.” No matter how you dress it up, “restricting the money that anyone can raise or spend is censorship, pure and simple.”

But corporations aren’t anyone, said Doug Kendall in the Los Angeles Times. “The Framers wrote the Constitution to protect citizens and the people, and never once used the word ‘corporations.’” A ruling that blurs the difference between individual citizens and wealthy companies would transform the U.S. from a government of “we the people” to “we the corporations.”