Clements notes that Justice William Rehnquist, as usual in these corporate speech cases, dissented:
"There is, however, a more fundamental flaw in the plurality's analysis. This Court has recognized that natural persons enjoy negative free speech rights because of their interest in self-expression; an individual's right not to speak or to associate with the speech of others is a component of the broader constitutional interest of natural persons in freedom of conscience. . . .Extension of the individual freedom of conscience decisions to business corporations strains the rationale of those cases beyond the breaking point. To ascribe to such artificial entities an 'intellect' or 'mind' for freedom of conscience purposes is to confuse metaphor with reality. Corporations generally have not played the historic role of newspapers as conveyers of individual ideas and opinion. In extending positive free speech rights to corporations, this Court drew a distinction between the First Amendment rights of corporations and those of natural persons."
Justice
Rehnquist closed with this: "PG & E is not an individual or a
newspaper publisher; it is a regulated utility. The insistence on
treating identically for constitutional purposes entities that are
demonstrably different is as great a jurisprudential sin as treating
differently those entities which are the same."
Well said. And
now buried beneath further rulings that compound the problem. Now the
Constitutional amendment process is how we must set things straight.
Make that call to Congress, and work at your local and state level as well.
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