We are honored to announce that former Montana Supreme Court Justice James Nelson and voting rights leader Greg Moore have joined our Board of Directors.
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The New Hampshire Senate voted unanimously to pass a bill calling for a 28th Amendment to the US Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC ruling and to reclaim our democracy.
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This week, the New York Times featured research by John Coates, a professor at Harvard Law School and a longtime member of Free Speech For People’s Legal Advisory Committee, on “the corporate takeover of the First Amendment.” The research stems from Free Speech For People’s November 2014 symposium at Harvard Law School on “Advancing a New Jurisprudence for American Self-Government and Democracy” (which Professor Coates helped organize). Professor Coates’s paper will be published in the symposium issue for the journal Constitutional Commentary along with other papers from the conference.
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Join John Bonifaz, Ben Manski, and Lori Wallach for a special conversation on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), soon to be a “bullet train to corporate nationhood.” Our Co-Founder will highlight recent cases post-Citizens United, where corporations claim constitutional rights to strike down public interest laws.
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Last week, lawyers argued in federal district in Seattle whether the city’s new minimum wage violates the equal protection rights of franchised business corporations. Yesterday, the judge denied the preliminary injunction on all claims, including Equal Protection and First Amendment claims. The ruling is an important step in the right direction to end the myth of corporate personhood, and to ensure protection of the rights of ‘we the people.’
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Free Speech For People joined the legal team defending the Take Back St. Louis ballot initiative campaign. This ballot initiative, which would amend the city charter of St. Louis (Missouri) to prevent the city from granting tax breaks to fossil fuel and nuclear mining companies, was challenged in court before the ballots were printed. At the preliminary injunction stage, the judge (citing Citizens United) found that the initiative would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as state law.
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This past Tuesday, lawyers argued in federal district court in Seattle whether the city’s new minimum wage violates the equal protection rights of franchised business corporations. Free Speech For People filed an amicus brief in support of the city, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause protects people, not corporations, and in particular that living wages were a central concern of the Fourteenth Amendment’s drafters. Our local counsel in Seattle, Harry Williams, attended the oral argument and submits this report.
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What is corporate charter revocation? Corporations are created by state law when the state government issues a corporate charter. A corporate charter provides special benefits that are not available to citizens, such as limited liability and perpetual life. In general, grant of these privileges through a corporate charter serves the public interest because corporations promote
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This morning, the independent news program, Democracy NOW!, hosted our Legal Director Ron Fein and Boston College Law Professor Kent Greenfield for a vigorous debate on corporate claims of constitutional rights. The debate spotlighted how major corporations like McDonald’s and Monsanto are trying to strike down public interest laws on the claim that they are people with constitutional rights.
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Last summer, Seattle passed a law to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 per hour. Sounds great, except McDonald’s and other members of the International Franchise Association are suing the city, claiming that the law violates the Equal Protection Clause under the Fourteenth Amendment.
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