No. The People’s Rights Amendment will preserve and protect free speech for everyone. Eliminating corporate money in politics or eliminating the ability of corporations to strike down laws that executives of a corporation may think limit corporate marketing campaigns will not effect the speech rights of a single person.

Defenders of the creation of a corporate rights doctrine in the First Amendment try to twist the right of free speech into some immunity from regulation for any advertising or corporate expenditure to disseminate a corporate message. Legislative action directed at corporations has nothing to do with the worth of particular speech but rather with a particular statutory capacity through which certain people wish to promote their speech, and their power. If executives and shareholders may not use their corporation to advance political positions, nothing would prevent those people who are executives and shareholders from making any speech they want, or spending any of their own money to disseminate that speech.

There is nothing unusual about rules preventing government-created entities such as corporations from being misused for political purposes. Mayors and city councilors cannot use their municipal corporations to spend municipal funds to support candidates, oppose perceived enemies, or influence ballot questions.[1] Federal law prevents government employees from using their position to engage in political activity.[2] Our Armed Forces accept the obligations of political neutrality without complaint.[3] Corporate capacity, as with other government-created capacities, may carry statutory restrictions on political activity.

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[1] See Creek v. Village of Westhaven, 80 F.3d 186, 192-93 (7th Cir. 1996); Anderson v. City of Boston, 380 N.E.2d 628 (Mass. 1978).
[2] 5 U.S.C. §§ 7321-7326; 5 U.S.C. §§ 1501-1508.
[3] See Dep’t of Defense Directive 1344.10, Political Activities By Members of the Armed Forces, Feb. 19, 2008, www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/134410p.pdf, accessed 2009-7-24.