We the People Amendment

The We The People Amendment is a joint resolution to amend the United States Constitution to abolish the doctrines of corporate personhood and money equals political speech. It was introduced by Representative Rick Nolan as H.J.Res. 29 on February 23, 2013. It has been re-introduced two more times as H.J.Res. 48 on April 29, 2015 and again as H.J.Res. 48 on January 30, 2017.

Background

See also: Corporate personhood See also: Campaign finance reform in the United States

The proposed amendment would establish that (1) constitutional rights are reserved for natural persons only, (2) that artificial entities (corporations, limited liability companies, and other incorporated entities established by the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state) have no rights under the Constitution and are subject to regulation through federal, state, or local law and (3) the privileges of such entities cannot be construed as inherent or inalienable. It would also require federal, state, and local governments to (1) regulate, limit, or prohibit political contributions or expenditures, including those made by a candidate, (2) require public disclosure of political contributions and expenditures, and (3) prohibit the courts from construing the spending of money to influence elections is not protected under the First Amendment. The amendment was proposed in response to the implications presented in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), a U.S. constitutional law case concerning the regulation of independent political expenditures by corporations, which the non-profit organization Citizens United challenged on the grounds of violating the First Amendment’s freedom of speech.

The basis for extending free speech rights under the doctrine of corporate personhood dates back over a century to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886). In this case, Chief Justice Morrison Waite began oral argument by stating, "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."

The debate of corporate constitutional rights can be parsed into the legal definitions of corporation and personhood, the latter term being controversial in regards to the philosophical debate over where human personhood begins and the legal debate over where legal personhood ends. Under US law, corporations are extended at least some legal rights and responsibilities as natural persons, such as the right to enter into contracts and to sue or be sued. However, the framers of the US Constitution had originally reserved constitutional protections for individual citizens and had not intended such protections to be inherent or inalienable for their organizations incorporated under law. In fact, Chief Justice Waite’s statement in Santa Clara County was inserted in the headnote, which was not part of the Court’s opinion and not considered precedent, but the doctrine was clearly affirmed in subsequent cases in Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania (1888) and Minneapolis and Saint Louis Railway v. Beckwith (1889).

In the 307 Fourteenth Amendment cases heard by the Supreme Court in the years following Santa Clara County, 288 cases involved corporations compared to 19 cases involving African Americans, its intended recipients. The Court reaffirmed its Santa Clara County precedent in the landmark case Lochner v. New York (1905), which expanded corporate deregulation under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses. A year later, the Court extended corporate personhood to include search and seizure protections under the Fourth Amendment in Hale v. Henkel (1906), from which dissenting Justice John Marshall Harlan stated, "to look into the books, records and papers of a corporation of its own creation, to ascertain whether that corporation has obeyed or is defying the law, will be greatly curtailed, if not destroyed." The Court later deemed in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon (1922) that a regulation by state government is a form of takings and ruled that corporations are protected from "private lands being taken for public use without just compensation" and therefore entitled to compensation for lost profit under the Fifth Amendment. During this period known as the Lochner era, the Court cited the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause in halting over 200 regulations intended for corporations. Despite the Court’s recognition of corporate personhood under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause would not be applied to women until the case Reed v. Reed (1971).

In the case of Citizens United, the extension of corporate personhood to include free speech rights was premised on the First Amendment’s Freedom of the Press Clause, which protects associations of individuals, including individual speakers. The Court ruled that Corporations (as associations of individuals) are entitled to free speech rights because the First Amendment does not allow prohibitions of speech based on the identity of the speaker. Furthermore, the Court extended its precedents set in Buckley v. Valeo (1976), which asserted corporate spending to political candidates and parties is the equivalent of free speech, and First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978), which established that non-media business corporations can give unrestricted money to "influence or affect" voter opinions in state political referenda.

Introduction

In the 113th Congress, the We the People Amendment received 3 co-sponsors from the Democratic Party. In the 114th Congress, it garnered 23 co-sponsors (22 Democrats, 1 Republican). In the 115th Congress, it has 44 co-sponsors (43 Democrats, 1 Republican).

As of September 2017, the joint resolution is in the House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice under the House Committee on the Judiciary.