Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It (26 page)

Inscribed high on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington is a more moderate version of Jefferson’s “water the tree of liberty with blood” recognition of the need to preserve a revolutionary spirit among the free people of America. “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions,” wrote Jefferson. “But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind… . We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”
¹⁹

We now know, having seen the successful execution of the Powell-Chamber plan for a long corporate drive for power, that current interpretation of the Constitution does not simply reflect “the progress of the human mind.” The creation of corporate rights and the transfer of power from the people to large corporations did not happen because we, the people, now have a more enlightened view of free speech and the Constitution. Rather, we, the people, are on the receiving end of that well-funded, well-organized, years-long corporatist campaign to twist our Constitution and subvert our government of people.

Accordingly, this is not a mere policy debate. We face a constitutional struggle, a national struggle. If that struggle is to be won, the Constitution must be returned to a charter of rights of sovereign people, a charter in which corporations have no place. With the People’s Rights Amendment campaign and corporate and election law reform, we can return again to a government of the people. We will have preserved once again what the Founders’ generation called the rights of man and what we, after two centuries of hard work and improbable successes by the American people, can proudly call the rights of people.

Presented here are the following resources:

The People’s Rights Amendment

The People’s Rights Amendment Resolution

Frequently Asked Questions About the People’s Rights Amendment

Organizations and Links for Taking Action Recommended Reading

Free Speech for People and Appalachian Voices’ Request for Revocation of Massey Energy Company Charters

Amendment XXVIII

S
ECTION I
. We the people who ordain and establish this Constitution intend the rights protected by this Constitution to be the rights of natural persons.

S
ECTION II
. The words
people, person,
or
citizen
as used in this Constitution do not include corporations, limited liability companies, or other corporate entities established by the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state. Such corporate entities are subject to any regulation as the people, through their elected state and federal representatives, deem reasonable and as are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.

S
ECTION III
. Nothing contained herein shall be construed to limit the people’s rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, and all such other rights of the people, which rights are inalienable.

WHEREAS,

We the people adopted and ratified the United States Constitution to protect the free speech and other rights of people, not corporations;

Corporations are not people; they are entities created by the law of states and nations;

For the past three decades, the Supreme Court has wrongly transformed the First Amendment and Constitution into a powerful tool for corporations seeking to evade and invalidate the people’s laws;

This corporate misuse of the Constitution reached an extreme conclusion in the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in
Citizens United
v.
Federal Election Commission;

Citizens United
v.
Federal Election Commission
overturned long-standing precedent prohibiting corporations from spending corporate general treasury funds in our elections;

Citizens United
v.
Federal Election Commission
unleashes a torrent of corporate money in our political process unmatched by any campaign expenditure totals in United States history;

Citizens United
v.
Federal Election Commission
purports to invalidate state laws and even state constitutional provisions separating corporate money from elections;

Citizens United
v.
Federal Election Commission
presents a serious and direct threat to our republican democracy;

Article V of the United States Constitution empowers and obligates the people and states of the United States of America to
use the constitutional amendment process to correct those egre-giously wrong decisions of the United States Supreme Court that go to the heart of our democracy and republican self-government;

and

The people and states of the United States of America have strengthened the nation and preserved liberty and equality for all by using the amendment process throughout our history, including in six of the ten decades of the twentieth century, and reversing seven erroneous Supreme Court decisions;

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT WE CALL ON THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS TO PASS AND SEND TO THE STATES FOR RATIFICATION A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO REVERSE CITIZENS UNITED V. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION AND TO RESTORE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND FAIR ELECTIONS TO THE PEOPLE.

By the People of

The People’s Rights Amendment overturns the 2010
Citizens United
v.
FEC
ruling, a 5-4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that held that we, the American people, are not allowed to limit corporate spending in elections. The Court ruled that corporations—even transnationals—can spend unlimited amounts to help elect or defeat candidates for public office. The American people have overturned at least six Supreme Court cases by constitutional amendment in the past, and we need to do the same with
Citizens United,
which makes corporate money the same as “speech.”

Most businesspeople, like other Americans, do not believe that corporations are people or that spending corporate capital in elections is constitutionally protected speech. Businesses are designed to provide a product or service, to employ people, and to build a strong economy. Many businesspeople exercise their rights to engage in the policymaking process, and that right never should be impeded, but allowing corporations to use their vast financial resources to buy political influence undermines the political rights of all citizens, as well as competitive markets.

The People’s Rights Amendment ends the misuse and abuse of people’s constitutional rights by transnational corporations to subvert democratically enacted laws and to gain advantage over competitors. The amendment makes clear that corporations are not people with constitutional rights and ensures that people, not corporations, govern in America.

What will be the impact of the People’s Rights Amendment on day-to-day business operations? Don’t corporations have to be “persons” in order to function in our economy?

The People’s Rights Amendment will have no impact on day-to-day or other operations of corporations. No activity of a business corporation requires the fabrication of corporate constitutional rights. The rights of individual people (doing business in a corporation or otherwise) are unchanged by the People’s Rights Amendment.

For two centuries, corporations were able to carry out their business purposes without the fabrication of constitutional rights, and the concept of “corporate speech rights” did not exist before 1978. Until the
Citizens United
ruling in 2010, we were free to use federal law to control corporate spending in elections and did so for more than a century.

The People’s Rights Amendment restores core democratic rights to citizens without changing the productive role of corporations in our economy. State and federal laws define corporations and set the rules for the use of the corporate form. These laws are unaffected by the People’s Rights Amendment.

Under state and federal law, corporations are “persons” for the purposes of contracting, suing, being sued, transacting business, and continuity of operations as employees come and go. Under state and federal law, corporations are “persons” for numerous purposes, from trademark protection to criminal prosecution. The People’s Rights Amendment has no effect whatsoever on those state and federal laws.

The People’s Rights Amendment stops the radical and improper application of the corporate “person” concept to the rights of real people under the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The People’s Rights Amendment would not affect the day-to-day business of corporations but would prevent misuse of our Constitution by corporations seeking to trump our laws. For example, Monsanto has used its corporate “speech rights” to strike down disclosure laws and conceal its use of genetically modified drugs in food production. This would not be allowed after the People’s Rights Amendment. The People’s Rights Amendment would prevent corporations from claiming the constitutional rights of persons to strike down laws enacted through our elected state and federal governments.

Following the passage of the amendment, we expect a freer, fairer, and more competitive marketplace where small and medium-size businesses will be less likely to face a competitive disadvantage due to political favoritism.

What effect will the People’s Rights Amendment have on our ability to use corporate entities in our business dealings?

None. The People’s Rights Amendment does not limit in any fashion the many ways in which people and the states can design and use corporate or other economic legal entities.

The People’s Rights Amendment simply states a fundamental truth: whatever corporate entities the state or federal governments create do not have constitutional rights. Instead, their rights and obligations are set out in state or federal corporate laws and other laws.

The corporate form has huge advantages, and we support state policies that encourage easy incorporation. We just shouldn’t confuse those policy advantages with constitutional rights.

Does that mean people will lose their rights when they do business in the corporate form?

No. The People’s Rights Amendment protects all rights of all people, whether or not they own, run, work for, or buy from corporations.

Whether the rights at issue are speech, due process, or any other human right, the people involved in a corporation—the CEO and executives, employees, shareholders, or other people in a corporation—retain all of their rights as people.

The People’s Rights Amendment simply means that we will not allow courts to pretend that corporations are people when it comes to the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

What about property rights? Will this change shareholder rights? Rights to due process?

The People’s Rights Amendment protects all constitutional rights of people, be they property rights or other rights.

Take an egregious hypothetical example, just to illustrate: Say the government decides it needs computer technology for some reason and enacts a law requiring that Apple deliver all of its intellectual property to the United States government. Apple sues to block the law, claiming that the government is taking private property without due process in violation of the Fifth Amendment (or the Fourteenth Amendment, if a state government tries this). Does Apple have constitutional rights not to have its property taken without due process?

The due process clause says that “no person” can be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process. Apple is not a “person” under the Constitution’s due process clause, but there are plenty of real people involved in this hypothetical who do have due process rights not to have the value of their Apple shares turned over to the government without due process. Nothing about the People’s Rights Amendment would prevent those real people from protecting their rights.

The claim could be brought directly by the corporation using statutes such as the federal Tort Claims Act. The claim could also be brought by the corporation, if it is deemed to have standing by the Court to raise the rights of its shareholders. The claim could be brought by the shareholders as a class.

Another possibility to litigate the question may include challenges to the constitutional power of the federal government to take such action, an approach taken when the Supreme Court invalidated the Truman administration’s nationalization of the American steel industry in 1952. The
People’s Rights Amendment does not empower the government to seize property or do anything in violation of our liberties.