Citizen Groups File Brief in Supreme Court

Five organizations today filed a abrupt in the United States Supreme Court advancement the Court not to aggrandize First Amendment rights of corporations, and not to accord corporations the aforementioned Constitutional rights as accustomed complete persons.

The groups filed the abrupt in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205, allurement the Court not to annul longstanding rules barring political expenditures by corporations. The amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” abrupt argues that the Court should not annul accompaniment and federal laws that adapt accumulated political expenditures because corporations do not accept the aforementioned Constitutional rights as people. As such, democratically allowable regulations of corporations do not breach the Constitution’s agreement of chargeless speech.

The 5 organizations complex in educational and accompanying efforts to action disproportionate and absolute accumulated access in backroom and freedom include: the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy; the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom; Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County; Shays2: The Western Massachusetts Committee on Corporations & Democracy; and the Clements Foundation. The abrupt was drafted and filed by Jeff Clements and Clements Law Office, LLC, who represented the organizations in the matter.

“The angle that corporations accept the aforementioned accent rights as humans beneath our Bill of Rights is adverse to the words, history, spirit and absorbed of our Constitution,” said Clements. “The organizations that abutting to accompany these arguments to the Court accept formed with others for abounding years to empower autonomous self-government. They admonish us that corporations do not vote, speak, or act as humans do, but are articles of government action to accomplish bread-and-butter and accommodating ends. As such, corporations charge not be accustomed to access our elections if Congress and State governments adjudicator that such access is adverse to democracy.”

The Supreme Court is belief whether chargeless accent protections beneath the First Amendment anticipate Congress from akin accumulated political attack expenditures. The Court is because abolishment federal attack regulations for corporations, originally allowable in 1907, and may anon alter Supreme Court cases absitively in 1990 and 2003 that had upheld the Constitutionality of aldermanic restrictions on accumulated money in politics.

The case now afore the Court began if a tax-exempt non-profit association calling itself Citizens United, Inc. challenged the Constitutionality of a federal ban on expenditures for “electioneering communications” by corporations and activity unions aural sixty canicule of an election. The ban is allotment of the federal Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Under the Act, corporations and activity unions may still accord to Political Action Committees, which are acceptable to accomplish backroom communications, clashing corporations.

Citizens United argued that the restrictions beneath the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act abandoned the Constitution as activated to the association that approved to deliver an anti-Hillary Clinton cine during the 2008 presidential primaries. A console of three federal commune cloister board upheld the adjustment of accumulated expenditures, and agreed that the Federal Election Commission could accomplish the law. The District Court relied on a 2003 Supreme Court case, McConnell v. Federal Election Comm’n, 540 U.S. 93 (2003), that had disqualified that the accumulated amount adjustment did not breach the chargeless accent guarantees of the First Amendment. Citizens United appealed to the Supreme Court.

After audition altercation in March 2009, the Supreme Court did not adjudge the case afore its appellation concluded in June. Instead, on June 29, 2009 the Court issued an adjustment advertence that the Court would accede the case afresh afterwards audition altercation as to whether the Court should alter its backing in McConnell and in a 1990 case, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652 (1990). Austin had disqualified that federal and accompaniment legislatures do not breach the First Amendment in assuming laws administering accumulated political activity.

If the Court overrules Austin and McConnell, First Amendment rights claimed by corporations will be decidedly expanded, and local, state, and federal governments will be added belted in the adeptness to adapt corporations and accumulated access on our autonomous processes.

The amicus abrupt shows that corporations, as acknowledged entities created by accompaniment or federal law for economic, accommodating or added purposes, were never advised to be included aural the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. The abrupt aswell shows that abandoning Austin and McConnell, and preventing accompaniment and federal governments from acclimation accumulated political activity, would be adverse to two centuries of Supreme Court case law. Finally, the abrupt highlights that the article that corporations are “persons” beneath the due action and according aegis clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment is doubtful, and an activist federal attorneys should not arbitrate to anticipate adopted accompaniment governments from barring, if they chose, accumulated political access in accompaniment elections.

The Supreme Court will apprehend added altercation in the case in September.

A archetype of the amicus abrupt can be apprehend here: www.clementsllc.com.

Contacts

Jeff Clements
Clements Law Office LLC
978-287-4901
mailto:jclements@clementsllc.com

The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy ("POCLAD") has instigated autonomous accomplishments apropos issues of corporations and capitalism back 1994. POCLAD offers seminars and publishing demonstrating how “corporate rights” doctrines attenuate democracy.

Contact: Ward Morehouse (413) 584-9642 ward.morehouse@gmail.com

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (“WILPF”) works to accomplish disarmament, rights for women, ancestral and bread-and-butter justice, and an end to violence. WILF maintains a Corporations v. Democracy Issue Committee and a “Challenge Corporate Power, Assert the People's Rights" campaign.
Contact: Mary Zepernick (508) 398-1023
Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County challenges disproportionate accumulated access on autonomous self-government. In June 2006, Humboldt County, California banned banking contributions in bounded elections from non-local corporations.
Contact: David Cobb (707) 476-8502 david@duhc.org

Shays 2: The Western Massachusetts Committee on Corporations & Democracy, through apprenticeship and peaceful action, challenges acknowledged doctrines beneath which corporations are believed to attenuate self-government.
Contact: Carolyn Toll Oppenheim, (413) 584-0722 ctollopp@gmail.com

The Clements Foundation supports non-profit organizations complex in education, ecology responsibility, and the advance of freedom and freedom.
Contact: Jeff Clements (978) 287-4901 mailto:jclements@clementsllc.com