Money ... talks?
The LA Times, on the Supreme Court’s decision today that allows corporations to spend money electioneering. From the article:
“Until Thursday, corporations and unions were barred from spending their own treasury funds on broadcast ads, campaign workers or billboards that urge the election or defeat of a federal candidate. … Thursday’s decision swept away all these restrictions.
” ‘The government may not suppress political speech on the basis of the speaker’s corporate identity,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion.’ “
So, right, the airwaves are filling with vitriolic First Amendment this and Stare Decisis that. It’s Free Speech vs. Judicial Activism, live on Fox. There will be blood!
And cetera.
I guess the foundational question that I have is this: why does spending money equal speech? I know we’re told that we “vote with our wallets” but I didn’t know that was supposed to be quite so, y’know, literal. It seems arbitrary, somehow, not to mention ipso facto inequitable that the volume at which you can speak should be correlated to the size of your bankroll.
But the heart of the matter lies in Kennedy’s quote when he refers to “the speaker’s corporate identity.” He’s not referring to the actor who’s speaking on behalf of the corporation, of course, nor to the members of the corporation (they can spend their own money on PACs and whatnot, that’s not what this case is about) - but rather to the corporation itself. That’s the key here, I think, is the personification of the corporation, imbuing to it an identity and a voice. Because if you don’t buy that then there’s no case - no First Amendment rights to protect. But if you do buy it, if you do extend to the corporation an identity, then you necessarily must necessarily afford it the right to free speech, and hence the right to spend without restriction. Because, ultimately, a corporation can only “speak” through those mechanisms listed above - advertising, billboards, etc… - and thus a law that restricts that ability to spend is akin to abridging the freedom to speak. That, I guess, is how free speech equals money, at least in the majority opinion of the SCOTUS.
Of course, I suppose that it also follows that corporations, given such identities, are also afforded the rights and protections of the rest of the constitution. Bearing arms. Voting. etc… Unless of course this is just some weird twisted logic to ensure that the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful…
ps. For those who hawk to the starboard side of the aisle, I only hope your defense of the First Amendment is as vociferous next time the issue of compelling journalists to testify about their sources comes up. Not to mention that whole church v state thing.
