Vermont, state senator Virginia Lyons introduced a bill to seek an amendment to the US Constitution providing that corporations are not persons. The movement is in reaction to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allows unlimited corporate spending in elections as a form of “free speech” for the corporate “person.” According to dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens:
Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.
According to a ABC News poll, 76% of Americans oppose the Citizens United decision. (Vermont Is Gearing Up to Strike a Major Blow to Corporate Personhood, Ban It Statewide | AlterNet.)
Corporate Sponsored Judges
Time to get on board by signing the MoveOn.org petition. Here’s the full text of the petition:
- “Corporations aren’t people and shouldn’t be able to corrupt our democracy. We need as many state legislatures as possible to get behind the call for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United ruling.”
We’re asking every state legislator in the country to back adopting resolutions supporting the only remedy we have left to correct the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision: a constitutional amendment clarifying that corporations are not people.
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