By: Maya Schmaling
Volume X – Issue II – Spring 2025
I. INTRODUCTION
For 59 days in 2011, hundreds of demonstrators marched through Manhattan’s financial district. Many held signs with a simple slogan: “We are the 99%.” [1] They denounced corporate political influence, corruption, and economic inequality, and called for higher taxes on the wealthy and standards of regulation. [2] Despite its brevity, the Occupy Wall Street Movement inspired hundreds of similar protests across the country and made national news; its anti-corporate rhetoric appeared to strike a chord with much of the American public. [3] Many of the protestors’ demands echoed longstanding calls for reform, but a previously little-known legal notion had entered the conversation. The U.S. Supreme Court’s thenrecent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) prohibiting restrictions on corporate independent political expenditures ignited concerns about corporate personhood, an established doctrine with a rather paradoxical name. The Occupy Movement’s “Declaration of the Occupation,” alluding to Citizens United, stated that corporations “have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.” [4]
While many frustrations spurring the Occupy Movement into action were linked to contemporary problems, corporations and citizens have shared certain rights for nearly two centuries. The concept of corporate personhood was born of practicality, and grants several powers to corporations necessary for operation as entities separate from their individual shareholders. Corporations have the right to enter into contracts and own property; they can sue or be sued. Corporations’ status as distinct legal entities encourages investment and economic growth and avoids inefficiencies such as having to name hundreds of shareholders in lawsuits. [5] However, the courts have intermittently expanded the legal rights of corporations since the late 19th century to enable abilities not as easily justifiable as functional necessities. Such rulings raise questions about the limits of the practicality of corporate personhood. Can broad interpretations of the Constitution benefit corporations at the expense of consumers and employees? Investigation of the genesis and development of corporate personhood is a means of locating the line between pragmatic policy and reckless deregulation, and to determine if it has been crossed.
II. ORIGINS: SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY
i. Corporate Personhood Before Santa Clara County
Corporations have enjoyed a legal status allowing for the possession of some rights almost since the founding of the United States. [6] The Court first grappled with the concept of corporate personhood in Bank of United States v. Deveaux (1809), deciding that corporations had the right to file lawsuits against other parties. The Constitution barred noncitizens from suing, and Justice John J. Marshall took care to defend the Court’s departure from originalism in its ruling: “A Constitution…deals in generals, not in detail. Its framers cannot perceive minute distinctions which arise in the progress of the nation.” Instead of focusing on corporations’ noncitizen status, the Court considered corporate rights in terms of the rights of citizen shareholders, who make up the substance of the corporate form. To bar corporations from suing would be to “sacrifice the substance to the form” by superseding the rights of the “real parties,” the individuals behind the wheel of the corporate vehicle. [7] This foundational line of reasoning would be recycled over the next two centuries in subsequent cases affirming corporate personhood.
Marshall argues that establishing legal privileges for corporations essentially abides by English precedent, and that “for the general purposes and objects of a law, this invisible, incorporeal creature of the law may be considered as having corporeal qualities.” [8] In Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) the Court prevented the state from infringing upon Dartmouth College’s contract to operate as a private institution. Marshall, again authoring the majority opinion, describes the corporation as an “artificial being…existing only in contemplation of law,” and states that “it possesses only those properties which the charter of creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence.” [9] Some of the Court’s later decisions conferring constitutional rights to corporations arguably fall beyond these limits laid out in Marshall’s early assertion. The power of unlimited political expenditure later permitted by Citizens United is not explicitly granted in charters of creation, nor is it necessary for corporate existence given the lengthy history of successful corporate operation prior to the decision.
ii. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886)
Although corporate personhood itself was not at issue in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), the case was fundamental in establishing a legal precedent for corporate identity under the Constitution. In 1886, the state of California taxed the property of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The company refused to pay, arguing that the State Board of Equalization had overstepped its jurisdiction by including fences in its assessment, which were not part of a “roadway” or any other category subject to taxation by the Board under the state constitution. The defense argument also wielded the Fourteenth Amendment: under California law, railroad companies operating in multiple counties were taxed at the full value of their property. At the same time, railroads within one county and “natural persons” were able to deduct outstanding mortgages, “imposing upon the defendant unequal burdens, and to that extent denying to it the equal protection of the laws.” However, the Court ruled only on the issue of whether the state constitution allowed for the Board of Equalization to tax the fences, siding with the defendants in a unanimous decision. The opinion, authored by Justice Marshall Harlan, did not actually address the application of the Fourteenth Amendment. Harlan wrote that the erroneous levy of the property tax was adequate grounds for a decision against the County, and thus “there will be no occasion to consider the grave questions of constitutional law upon which the case was determined below.” [10]
Santa Clara County’s legacy as pivotal in the early legal development of corporate personhood is not derived from the Court’s opinion at all, but rather from the inclusion of a comment made by Chief Justice Morrison Waite in a headnote, an unofficial summary of the case written by a Reporter of Decisions. Before argument, Waite said, “The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment…applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.” Despite the Court’s refusal to weigh the defendant’s alleged constitutional abridgment, the case is arguably most known for the precedent set by Waite’s pretrial remark: that corporations are included alongside people under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
It is important to note that headnotes lack legal standing and, unlike the judicial opinion, are not meant to be cited as precedent. [11] However, subsequent cases, such as Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta Railroad Company v. Gibbes (1887) and Stockton v. Baltimore (1887) cited Santa Clara County in reaffirming Waite’s comment even before the Court expressly ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to corporations in Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining and Milling Company v. Pennsylvania (1888). [12] After Pembina, Santa Clara County continued to be cited alongside other cases that officially reaffirmed the inclusion of corporations under the Fourteenth Amendment.
III. CORPORATIONS, THE FIRST AMENDMENT, & POLITICAL SPENDING
i. Defining Corporate Free Speech: First National Bank of Boston et al. v. Bellotti (1978)
While the limitations of corporate speech had been examined in cases prior to 1978 involving unions and media organizations, Bellotti was the first to establish broad legal parameters for the inclusion of corporations under the First Amendment. The First National Bank of Boston, alongside several other corporations, intended to fund advertisements meant to influence Massachusetts voters against supporting a proposed state constitutional amendment. The amendment would have introduced a graduated income tax, which the appellants believed could negatively impact their businesses. When the Massachusetts Attorney General, Francis Belotti, informed the corporations that they would be prohibited from doing so under Mass. Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 55, § 8, they brought a lawsuit alleging an infringement upon their free speech and due process rights under First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment, respectively. [13] The statute in question generally prohibits corporations from expending money for “the purpose of…aiding or promoting or antagonizing the interest of any political party” and includes a clause exempting corporations from punishment for attempting to influence “issues that materially affect its business, property, or assets.” [14] The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court sided with Bellotti, agreeing that this exemption did not apply because the plaintiffs were unable to prove that a general income tax would have a material effect on their businesses. [15]
After the ruling in favor of Belotti, the corporations appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court disagreed with the lower decision defining the issue as whether, and to what extent, corporations had First Amendment rights. Instead, Justice Powell drew a more direct line in the majority opinion, framing the question as whether the statute “abridges expression that the First Amendment was meant to protect.” Political discussion, Powell writes, “is the type of speech indispensable to decision making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual.” [16] In focusing on the speech itself rather than the speaker, the ruling in favor of the appellants disregards the matter of corporate identity and essentially places corporations under the same First Amendment protections as all other entities capable of speaking. The Court decided that the importance of sustaining the marketplace of ideas overrode the requirement that the speech must regard an issue having a “material effect” on the speaker’s business. By applying the First Amendment to corporations under the Due Process Clause, the Court expanded the personhood doctrine originating from Santa Clara County to allow corporate spending on influencing state ballot measures.
In his dissent, Justice Rehnquist countered Powell’s justification that political discussion, regardless of the source of opinion, is paramount to a free democracy. Corporations have fundamentally separate and comparably simplistic objectives from natural persons: commercial success and economic efficiency. They have limited liability and unlimited lifespans. Rehnquist writes, “It might reasonably be concluded that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere.” [17] This perspective aligns with those expressed by Justice Marshall and Justice Black in their respective dissents: the numerous glaring differences between corporations and natural citizens cannot rationally be ignored, so the legal abilities of corporations should not extend beyond the territory of functional necessity. That a corporation must assume some kind of distinct legal identity is a natural outcome of existing within the legal framework dictating ownership and transaction. Whether it must engage in political speech to function under these same environmental pressures is another matter.
ii. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010)
12 years after Bellotti, the Court heard arguments for Austin v. Michigan State Chamber of Commerce (1990), another critical case that would be considered thoroughly as precedent, and ultimately overturned, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010). In Austin, the Court sided with the government, citing the potentially disproportionate political influence granted by corporate wealth. It found that a Michigan law prohibiting corporations from engaging in independent political expenditure with general treasury funds did not violate First Amendment rights. Justice Thurgood Marshall employs a quote from FEC v. NCPAC (1985) in the Court’s opinion: “the compelling governmental interest in preventing corruption support[s] the restriction of the influence of political war chests funneled through the corporate form.” [18]
In 2008, Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit organization, created a film documenting Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The film was critical of Clinton and evidently aimed to dissuade watchers from voting for her. Citizens United wanted to make the film available through videoon-demand, and like the appellants in Bellotti, funded advertisements with a clearly political purpose; the ads featured clips from the movie, which demonstrably represented a viewpoint opposing Clinton. Worried about prosecution under 2 USC § 441b, a provision of the Federal Elections Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) and § 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), Citizens United moved to request a preliminary injunction. § 441b prohibited the use of general treasury funds in independent political expenditure, and § 203 expanded the restriction to include “electioneering communications.” Both the FECA and the BCRA made exceptions for contributions made through Political Action Committees (PACs), which are funded voluntarily by individuals and can only direct $5,000 to a candidate each election. [19]
The Court in Citizens United painstakingly reviewed what it coined as Austin’s “antidistortion rationale.” [20] For one thing, Justice Anthony Kennedy argues, the ruling was inappropriately broad, implicating all corporations despite important differences in size and purpose; such a restriction seemingly allowed for censorship of media corporations as well. [21] Kennedy considers the First Amendment, which does not make exceptions based on financial capability or categorize speakers at all, and reasons that “the Framers may have been unaware of certain types of speakers or forms of communication, but that does not mean that those speakers and media are entitled to less First Amendment protection.” [22] He maintains that the disproportionately large monetary power of corporations is an unsuitable justification for speech limitation, in that even individuals and the press “use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech,” which is protected by the First Amendment. [23] Even though corporations at the time could permissibly voice political opinions through PACs, Kennedy argues that because a PAC constitutes a “separate association from its corporation,” the freedom of speech of the corporation itself is abridged by any law limiting corporate speech to this medium. [24]
Kennedy refutes the idea of limiting corporate speech to protect shareholders from inadvertently funding political expression they might disagree with, which Justice John Paul Stevens addresses in his dissenting opinion. Stevens writes, “The problem of dissenting shareholders shows that even if electioneering expenditures can advance the political views of some members of a corporation, they will often compromise the views of others.” [25] Allowing corporations to use general treasuries in furthering some managers’ political speech simultaneously infringes upon the speech of other individual shareholders, who must now contribute economically to another’s expression. He calls corporate personhood a “useful legal fiction,” adding, “But they are not themselves members of "We the People" by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.” [26]
Two months later, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision in Speechnow.org v. Federal Election Commission (2010), which involved a nonprofit association hoping to utilize its donations for unlimited political expenditure. The court applied the recent Citizens United decision to strike down limits on all independent expenditures to political committees. [27] The rulings in favor of Citizens United and Speechnow.org allowed for the creation of “super PACs,” which can raise and contribute unlimited amounts of money for political purposes as long as it does not directly fund a candidate’s campaign. [28] By overturning Austin and invalidating §441 and §203, the Court strayed from precedent to effectively remove all bars to unlimited independent expenditure by corporations.
iii. Public Opinion After Citizens United
It is difficult to precisely measure the impact of Citizens United on political contributions. From 2008 to 2012, independent expenditures rose by 594%—but corporations did not play a significant role in this increase. The “unlimited” aspect of the ruling was key in drawing affluent donors to new routes through which to funnel their wealth, and individual independent contributions to super PACs dominated corporate contributions. [29] Nevertheless, the decision received extensive media coverage, and the concept of corporate spending rapidly demonstrated itself to be unpopular on a sweeping scale. The Occupy Wall Street movement was not the only symptom of public alarm following the decision. A poll conducted by Gallup in January of 2010 found that 76% of voters believed in limits on political donations by corporations or unions. [30] In 2011, Target was widely condemned for funding a PAC backing a Republican gubernatorial candidate. [31] At his State of the Union Address six days after the ruling, President Barack Obama criticized the Court’s decision, adding, “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests.” [32] Awareness of the idea of corporate personhood grew alongside public concern about corporate influence in politics. In an infamous moment during an Iowa campaign speech, responding to a heckler suggesting that taxes be levied upon corporations, presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, “corporations are people too, my friend….everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people.” Shouts erupted in the audience; one person cried, “No they’re not!” [33] The Obama campaign used the clip in an opposition ad. [34]
With increasing public unease surrounding corporations’ rights came the formation of Move to Amend in 2010, a grassroots organization advocating for the addition of a constitutional amendment explicitly forbidding corporations from having any rights under the Constitution. [35] By 2017, Move to Amend had accumulated 400,000 supporters. [36] 842 local governments have passed resolutions calling for the Citizens United decision to be overturned, and 22 states have called for the introduction of amendments similar to the one proposed by Move to Amend. [37] Corporate personhood has grown to be viewed by many as an adverse symptom of late capitalism and a business-governed America.
iv. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014)
A somewhat lesser-known case came before the court four years after Citizens, broadening the doctrine of corporate personhood on a different but constitutionally related matter: the right to express religion. Hobby Lobby refused to provide contraceptive coverage for their employees, which was required by the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), under the rationale that the owners’ Christian faith made the corporation a nonprofit religious organization exempted by the HHS. Two other corporations were included in the case. Because the owners believed that life begins at conception, they asserted their right to refuse to comply in what they viewed as furthering an action contradicting their faith. This justification was denied by the lower courts, who held that corporations could not “engage in religious exercise” and therefore were not protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. [38]
Justice Samuel Alito delivered the Court’s opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014) in favor of the corporations. He references the Dictionary Act (1 USCS § 1) as including corporations in the legislative definition of “persons,” and frames a definition solely excluding for-profit corporations as inconceivable. [39] Alito refutes the lower court’s argument that the sole profit-making motive of corporations removes them from RFRA protection by claiming that many corporations also support charitable causes: “If for-profit corporations may pursue such worthy objectives, there is no apparent reason why they may not further religious objectives as well.” [40] Protecting the religious freedom of corporations also protects that of their owners, who make decisions through the corporate body. Corporations can exercise religion, the Court concludes, and finding no valid compelling government interest, the contraceptive mandate violates the RFRA. [41] The primary argument in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion is that the Court’s decision is overly broad. She describes the negative impact of exemptions made for religious reasons on numerous third parties who may differ in their beliefs, such as all of the female employees of the corporations in Burwell. [42] Ginsburg writes, “The Court’s expansive notion of corporate personhood…invites for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faith.” [43] All eyes are on the Court, and the broadness of the decision may attract corporate attention to a clear means by which to escape unwanted regulation.
IV. ANALYSIS
A cartoon published in a 2010 issue of The New Yorker depicts an attorney arguing before the Supreme Court above the caption, “If you prick a corporation, does it not bleed? If you tickle it, does it not laugh? If you poison it, does it not die?” [44] The cartoon, meant to highlight the absurdity of considering corporations and individuals as homogeneous under the law, is probably not far from the image most people have in mind when they hear the words “corporate personhood.” The almost reflexive interpretation of the term, that corporations are arbitrarily, or perhaps sinisterly, considered people under the law, is an oversimplification. Of course, the argument for corporate personhood is not as illogical as the scene the cartoon depicts. Legal identity is an immaterial construct, and no one is meant to accept the truly absurd notion that corporations and humans are literally the same. The extent to which corporate personhood is associated with unlimited corporate spending is also misleading. Staunch anti-corporate personhood viewpoints ignore the existing interests corporations and people share as intertwined entities; corporations are operated by human beings, after all, and in some capacity provide for other human beings, even if only on a broader economic scale. Mitt Romney probably did not intend to convince his audience in Iowa to view corporations as friends and neighbors, but rather attempted to communicate, albeit unsuccessfully, that taxes on corporations would ultimately burden consumers. At its core, corporate personhood means a distinct legal identity for corporations, and such an identity serves an important purpose as an inherent part of a largely free market system.
At the same time, the extent to which corporate rights have expanded since the days of Deveaux is uncanny. While the long-term effects of the leniency shown to corporate expression are difficult to predict, the precedents set by Citizens United and Burwell have ominous implications. To believe that corporate interest in the political sphere is at all comparable to a typical voter’s interest is to accept a naive worldview. There are countless non-economic outcomes of elections and voters often use their moral compass as a guide. While Alito was correct in stating that corporations do act altruistically on occasion, that fact does not override the profit motive, which is an intrinsic survival instinct for a commercial organization. Consequently, if one frontrunning candidate or party is more opposed to regulations on businesses than another, their campaign might receive more monetary support from corporations and the ultra-wealthy, whose political interests often resemble each other. If political favor is weighed in the interests of profit-making and free-market enterprise, it cannot be representative of the people. In the same vein, the importance of protecting the free religious expression of the individuals behind the corporation should not outweigh the expression and fair treatment of affiliated third party individuals. Limiting corporate expression is not quite the same as limiting human expression, because all individuals have access to their own identity, autonomy, and rights outside of the corporate form. Instead, it targets a powerful and widely inaccessible tool through which expression can be conveyed.
Return momentarily to 1819, when Justice Marshall described corporations as “artificial…invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.” Corporations themselves are intangible, but election outcomes are real, and the resulting policy can have material, visible consequences outside of the law. It is difficult to reconcile unlimited political spending and religious expression as rights “incidental” to the “very existence” of corporate operation. Deregulation should not reach a point where it infringes upon individual liberties or the functioning of a representative democracy. Criticisms of a too-literal interpretation of corporate personhood must be balanced out by adequate caution and careful consideration of the implications of a broadened precedential platform. It is important to make a distinction between the view that corporate personhood is a pragmatic necessity, as established in Santa Clara County, Devaux, and Woodward, and the view that contemporary corporate personhood has gone too far, as in Citizens United and Burwell. These are not mutually exclusive statements. Much of the disagreement surrounding corporate personhood stems from a rift in communication.
An ideal solution would preserve the practical aspects of corporate personhood while limiting non-essential abilities that may have detrimental effects. However, any legislation limiting corporate independent expenditure or religious expression would almost certainly be struck down as unconstitutional, unless the Court itself overturns the decisions in Citizens United and Burwell. A new amendment, such as the one proposed by Move to Amend, requires the support of two-thirds of both houses of congress and three-fourths of the states, which is especially infeasible considering the relatively partisan nature of the topic.
Realistically, limiting corporate personhood would require a drastic transformation of the current legal and political environment. Within the confines of the system, measures can still be taken to mitigate the effects of unlimited independent expenditure. Public funding programs, in which governments fund eligible candidates with matching funds or vouchers, can help even the playing field between candidates backed by many small donors and candidates able to access a wealthy network. However, such programs would require successful legislation, and would likely fail to fully close the funding gap fueled by affluent donors. Still, if any change is to be made, it will be from the ground up. Efforts focused on mitigation rather than elimination have a greater chance at effectiveness, and steps can still be taken toward a future in which corporate personhood remains nothing more than a useful legal fiction.
Endnotes
[1] James A. Anderson, “How Occupy Wall Street Changed Us, 10 Years Later,” Time, November 15, 2021, https://time.com/6117696/occupy-wall-street-10-years-later/.
[2] “Occupy Wall Street.” Encyclopædia Britannica, March 13, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Occupy-WallStreet; Anderson, “How Occupy Wall Street Changed Us.”
[3] Anderson, “How Occupy Wall Street Changed Us.”
[4] “Declaration of the Occupation.” The Occupied Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2011.
[5] “Corporate Personhood: What It Means and How It Has Evolved,” Purdue Global Law School, January 26, 2023, https://www.purduegloballawschool.edu/blog/news/corporate-personhood.
[6] Adam Winkler, “The Long History of Corporate Rights,” Boston University Law Review 98 (2018): 64–69, https://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2018/11/WINKLER-4.pdf.
[7] Bank of United States v. Deveaux, 9 U.S. 61, 30, 45 (1809), https://plus.lexis.com/api/permalink/4f03df00-6e1e-40c2-9d09-95c607f8c86d/?context=1530671.
[8] Deveaux, 9 U.S. 61, at 41.
[9] Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518, 636 (1819), https://plus.lexis.com/api/permalink/33d3a7cc-9d6b-4893-a57a-b961d40d64e0/?context=1530671.
[10] Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394, 409 (1886), https://plus.lexis.com/api/permalink/ff54f01c-3b85-48e2-90c1-383828de0891/?context=1530671.
[11] “Libguides: Basic Legal Research: Case Law Reporters,” Northern Illinois University College of Law, January 10, 2025. https://libguides.niu.edu/basic-legal-research.
[12] Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta R.R. Co. v. Gibbes, 27 S.C. 382 (1887), https://advance.lexis.com/api/permalink/c6e9067e-18f6-4091-8e04-97c6ac79eea9/?context=1000516; Stockton v. Baltimore & N.Y.R. Co., 32 F. 9 (1887), https://advance.lexis.com/api/permalink/50ec5950-64f5-4262-8db0-c5b78ffa4ca4/?context=1000516; Pembina Consol. Silver Mining & Milling Co. v. Pennsylvania, 125 U.S. 181 (1888), https://advance.lexis.com/api/permalink/da2c3edf-4794-4282-b643-3abfbda18e25/?context=1000516.
[13] First Nat’l Bank v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 713, 770 (1978), https://plus.lexis.com/api/permalink/82956f5d-a14b-46f9-8e76-dec285861c47/?context=1530671.
[14] Mass. Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 55, § 8 (1977), https://plus.lexis.com/api/permalink/a0d5389c-9a45-440d-8bcc-ff0a07edd0e3/?context=1530671.
[15] First Nat’l Bank v. Attorney Gen., 371 Mass. 773, 786 (1977), https://plus.lexis.com/api/permalink/f3f37e3d-f783-4029-a11b-171297a05ccd/?context=1530671.
[16] Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, at 776–777.
[17] Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, at 826.
[18] Austin v. Mich. State Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652, 659 (1990), https://plus.lexis.com/api/permalink/6c972113-7ab7-41a0-9338-e82d88b184fd/?context=1530671.
[19] Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), https://plus.lexis.com/api/permalink/b2322380-2827-44b6-981f-35d7789cc9e1/?context=1530671.
[20] Citizens United, 558 U.S. 310, at 348.
[21] Citizens United, 558 U.S. 310, at 352.
[22] Citizens United, 558 U.S. 310, at 353.
[23] Citizens United, 558 U.S. 310, at 351.
[24] Citizens United, 558 U.S. 310, at 337.
[25] Citizens United, 558 U.S. 310, at 478.
[26] Citizens United, 558 U.S. 310, at 466.
[27] Speechnow.org v. FEC, 599 F.3d 686, 692 (2010), https://plus.lexis.com/api/permalink/0174fcbe-36ea-44ef-bc6c-e8ef9d578547/?context=1530671.
[28] Wendy L. Hansen and Michael S. Rocca, “The Impact of ‘Citizens United’ on Large Corporations and Their Employees,” Political Research Quarterly 72, no. 2 (2019): 403–419. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45276917.
[29] Wendy L. Hansen et al., “The Effects of Citizens United on Corporate Spending in the 2012 Presidential Election,” Journal of Politics 77, no. 2 (2015): 535–545. https://doi.org/10.1086/680077.
[30] Lydia Saad, “Public Agrees with Court: Campaign Money Is ‘Free Speech,’” Gallup.com, October 16, 2024, https://news.gallup.com/poll/125333/Public-Agrees-Court-Campaign-Money-Free-Speech.aspx.
[31] Sabina Bunt Thaler, “Citizens United and Forced Speech: Why Protecting the Dissenting Shareholder Necessitates Disclosure of Corporate Political Expenditures After Citizens United v. FEC,” Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice 17, no. 2 (2011): 591–650. https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol17/iss2/9.
[32] Brian Duignan, "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission," Encyclopaedia Britannica, April 15, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/event/Citizens-United-v-Federal-Election-Commission.
[33] “Romney: Corporations are People Too,” CNN, August 12, 2011, video, 1:23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxUsRedO4UY.
[34] “Obama Campaign Recalls Romney’s ‘Corporations Are People’ Comment,” ABC News, May 24, 2012, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/obama-campaign-recalls-romneys-corporations-peoplecomment/story?id=16421364.
[35] “Move to Amend’s Proposed Amendment to the Constitution,” Move to Amend, accessed April 22, 2025, https://www.movetoamend.org/amendment.
[36] Philip Kotler, “Move to Amend: We the People, Not We the Corporations,” HuffPost, December 7, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/move-to-amend-we-the-peop_b_8239412.
[37] “Overturning Citizens United: By the Numbers,” Public Citizen, January 19, 2024, https://www.citizen.org/article/by-the-numbers/.
[38] Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682, 683 (2014), https://plus.lexis.com/api/permalink/c5e28500-fe6d-4a8a-b25c-c3651dc0d75d/?context=1530671.
[39] Burwell, 573 U.S. 682, at 707–708.
[40] Burwell, 573 U.S. 682, at 712.
[41] Burwell, 573 U.S. 682, at 736.
[42] Burwell, 573 U.S. 682, at 740.
[43] Burwell, 573 U.S. 682, at 757.
[44] David Sipress, “A lawyer representing a corporation standing on trial in court,” The New Yorker, March 14, 2011.