What’s the difference between you and a giant corporation like Amazon? According to the Supreme Court, nothing! 

Corporations are apparently people, with the same free speech rights under the Constitution that you and I have.

But wait, if corporations break the law, they can’t be imprisoned. You can be! Corporations can’t be executed. If you commit a felony in a state like Texas, you could be! Corporations that cause accidents or go bankrupt enjoy limited liability, so their investors are off the hook. If you cause an accident or go bankrupt, you’re on the hook. And since corporations are just collections of legal agreements, they can live forever. You can’t! 

Worse yet, while they can’t actually vote in elections like real people, they can spend virtually unlimited money influencing politics. 

So how did corporations get turned into people? And who opened the door to their influence over our elections? Thank the Supreme Court. 

It began in the wake of the Watergate scandal when Congress amended the Federal Election Campaign Act in hopes of preventing future corruption. The amendments limited campaign contributions for individuals, as well as spending by candidates and outside groups. A group of senators, led by James L. Buckley of New York, sued, claiming the law violated candidates’ First Amendment rights.

In its 1976 Buckley v. Valeo ruling, the Supreme Court agreed with Buckley that the limits on spending were “direct and substantial restraints on the quantity of political speech” and therefore unconstitutional. 

Thus, the notion that money is speech was born, and the door to corporate political dominance was unlocked. 

Next came the 1978 case First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti. A group of banks and corporations challenged a Massachusetts law limiting corporations’ ability to run political ads. They found a sympathetic ear with Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, the author of the infamous memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce calling for more corporate money in American politics.

In his majority opinion, Justice Powell wrote that the ads the corporations wanted to run were, “the type of speech indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual.” 

With that ruling, the Court established that corporations are people with the same First Amendment rights as you and me — allowing them to get their foot in the door to take over elections.

These cases laid the groundwork for Citizens United in 2010. The court’s conservative justices decided that any restrictions on independent political spending by corporations were unconstitutional. The door for corporate influence in politics was finally kicked wide open. Not only were corporations people who could spend money on politics, but they had the right to drown our democracy with as much money as they wanted.

The irony is that while the Supreme Court has been busy granting corporations more power to influence elections, they’ve been stripping actual people of their power to influence elections.

In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. The conservative justices’ ruling stripped the “preclearance” requirement that states with a history of voter suppression must receive clearance from the federal government before enacting any new voting laws. The court essentially ruled that the racial voter suppression that the Voting Rights Act was intended to guard against no longer existed.

In the years since, the very same states that were previously subjected to preclearance have passed a wave of voter suppression laws. Unsurprisingly, these laws disproportionately affect voters of color.

The result? Corporations — legal fictions held together by collections of contracts — have more power in our democracy than many real people.

But these aren’t fundamental American principles. They’re relatively new ideas, concocted by conservatives on the Supreme Court and their deep-pocketed allies. The door to corporate influence can and must be shut again.

First, we need a president and Congress committed to getting big money out of politics. That means overturning Citizens United, publicly funding elections, and putting the guardrails back on corporate political spending.

While we’re slashing the power of corporations, we need to increase the power of the people. Congress needs to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which restores the 1965 Voting Rights Act to its full power so states can no longer pass voter suppression laws.

Finally, we need a Supreme Court that will affirm that money is not speech and corporations are not people.

Together, we can get big money out of politics, restore voting rights, and make sure our democracy answers to YOU, not corporations, once and for all.