Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Citizens United Case


Perhaps no Supreme Court case since Bush v. Gore has engendered such dyspeptic rage at Citizen United v. FEC, a 5-4 ruling that held laws prohibiting independent expenditures by corporations advocating on behalf of a candidate's election to be unconstitutional.

It may seem unusual that corporations have "free speech" rights that extend to elections.  It seems that it is this proposition is behind much of the outrage.  If you have a problem with that, however, you should have gotten angry a long time ago when the court first stated that proposition.  That such a right extends to corporate spending on behalf of a ballot proposal was announced many years ago in the First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti case.  Extending the reasoning of Bellotti to advocacy for a candidate doesn't seem like such a leap if you accept the court's reasoning in these prior cases.  This did mean reversing its decision in Michigan Chamber v. Austin, a case that, itself, was not terribly consistent with the Court's previous rulings in this area.

For our purposes, the question however is what has been the affect on our government?  So far, we've seen no evidence that corporations have any interest in availing themselves of this newly declared liberty.  Right now the big winners appear to be the portion of the Washington bar specializing in campaign finance laws.

Congress is getting ready to take up legislation that will provide transparency to efforts by corporations to finance independent campaigns for or against one candidate (Note: corporations and labors may still not actually donate $ to the campaign itself - the activity must be truly independent).  Interestingly, it's liberal groups, however, that are voicing concerns about having to disclose their donors.

We'll keep watching corporate activity here to see what the impact of the ruling is.  As an in-house corporate lawyer, my own guess is not a whole lot as companies are (a) loath to spend money on politics unless it directly affects its short term bottom line, and (b) very risk adverse when it comes to the resultant publicity.

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