I’m no lawyer, Constitutional or otherwise, but I must admit to some ambivalence WRT equating(/conflating/whatever) a corporate right with an individual one.  That aside, I wonder if this “liberty” will be extended, say, to religious organizations, which may now be allowed to speak out on federal election issues without the fear that their tax-exempt status will be revoked by the IRS . . .

i didn’t read the details but…so much for roberts and alito ‘i’m not going to overturn precedent’ claims. oh well, they are only different in philosophy than the activist liberal justices in the past so it was not unexpected that they would lie about their true intentions just as liberals did.
republicans should be jumping for joy, this will mean a return to running the country in a relatively short amount of time.

What the headline doesn’t say (since we’re in the “bashing corporations” mode in the press these days) is that unions as well as corporations will be able to fund ads before elections. I never liked the idea of campaign finance reform that stifled speech right before an election - and now I see a majority of the justices didn’t either. It never seemed fair to me - to deny one type of group a constitutional right.

In SCOTUS and in the Federal Government and in the world of politicians everywhere in this great country, only corporations have “rights”. That is why “health reform” for Republicans and Democrats is fundamentally a “Corporate Health and Pharmaceutical Profit Maintenance and Enhancement” plan. Meanwhile, those endowed by their creator with unalienable rights will find their rights squashed by corporations and government. Justice Roberts should have the rights language of the constitution pointed out to him - not that it would do any good. But God didn’t endow corporations with “rights”.

But God didn’t endow corporations with “rights”.

Because apparently corporations are made up of faceless reptellian kitten eaters from another planet, not humans.

Kind of interesting that everybody cites the free ‘speech’ aspect of this, as though there’s nothing else in the First Amendment.  In fact, there’s something there called freedom of the press, and presses aren’t people either.  If the New York Times - a corporation - can advocate - and it does every day in its editorial page (and elsewhere) - why not other corporations?

Agreed, Sidney. More speech more often, not less. And with the Internet, etc., you don’t necessarily need big bucks to get your message out.

The “corporation” at the bottom of this case is, as I understand it, a non-profit group wanting to air an anti-Hillary film in the 2008 election period.  So, according to some here, it’s okay for Michael Moore, an individual with pots of money, to air an anti-Bush film (whose openings were attended by thousands of Democratic party officials across the nation), but it’s not okay for individuals not having as much money themselves to join together to air a political film.  Americans should not be denied rights which they have individually simply because they join in an association to exercise them.

I’m all for it, but would like to see greater transparency in where funds go.  I liken it to race car drivers.  Let’s put stickers all over a candidate so we can see who bought and paid for them.

Well put, Sidney (#6) and Katherine (#8).  Katherine, you are correct about the group at the bottom of this case.

This is great news.  I’m ecstatic that individuals banding together under legal organizational structures can actually spend money to support candidates that share the same foundational worldviews.

America’s Supreme Court majority is dead wrong on this one. Individual citizens get to vote. Not corporations. Not unions. Not associations of any kind. One registered voter, one vote. However, the effect of allowing some citizens who possess and/or control vast amounts of capital to band together and effectively monopolize the media’s allotted programming and advertising time for “free speech” will be to give those citizens so much more persuasive power that they will, effectively, end up with more than one vote each. Allowing money to run even more rampant in politics than it does already is poison for democratic society.

This has been a week to remember!  SCOTUS finally restores free speech, the Health Care Reform bill is killed by a Republican coup in Massachusetts of all places, and Air America’s hate mongering is swept from the airwaves!

Thank you Lord.

Interesting comments.  It seems that we are all for free speech when it is ineffective (you can talk all you want on the public sidewalk), but we will limit it precisely when it becomes effective and actually can influence policy.  It seems that the Bill of Rights is liked better in the abstract than in the reality.

The Supreme Court was dead right on this.  I know that this us not tidy, but it is deadly to freedom for the targets of free speech (government and elected officials) to have the power to regulate it and to shut it down.

Henry Greville (#12), your reasoning applies equally to political parties.

And while I would gladly see the power of political parties diminished in this country, I don’t think that it follows that individuals lose their freedom of speech in the aggregate.

Transparency (cf. the NASCAR analogy, supra), not prohibition, is the key to helping keep money from poisoning democratic society.

However, the effect of allowing some citizens who possess and/or control vast amounts of capital to…effectively monopolize the media’s allotted programming and advertising time for “free speech” will be to give those citizens so much more persuasive power that they will, effectively, end up with more than one vote each.

Think George Soros. Think Michael Moore. Think Jon Corzine. Think of any rich person you like. The fact is that there is no society where resources aren’t unequal, regardless of whether you are talking about individuals or groups. Those who want to limit speech to only those of whom they approve are in essence saying that only certain types of speech should be permitted. That way lies tyranny.

It seems how one feels about this matter depends on what and whose propaganda one tends to agree with.

Good piece here at CNN. From Matt Welch:

Free speech really does mean free speech, and the laws that the “Citizens” ruling overturned directly and heinously restricted the stuff. Forget for the moment the broad characterization of the ruling—such as The New York Times claim that it “sweep[s] aside a century-old understanding”—and drill down to the individual case in question.

Citizens United, a conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofit that has funded a dozen political documentaries over the years, produced a critical documentary about Hillary Clinton in 2008 entitled “Hillary: The Movie.” By a decision of the federal government, which was enforcing the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (known more broadly as McCain-Feingold), this piece of political speech was banned from television.

Let’s boil it down to the essential words: Political documentary, banned, government.

You don’t have to be a First Amendment purist to intuit that political speech was, if anything, the most urgent subcategory covered by the First Amendment’s “Congress shall pass no law” restrictions. And you don’t have to be a Hillary-hater to imagine the shoe on the other foot. . .

For many liberals I know, the free-speech objection to campaign-finance law is just a smokescreen for enabling corporate villainy. I mean, Mitch McConnell cares about the First Amendment? I used to think that way, too. But try this exercise: Check out the free-speech objections by people who don’t want Goldman Sachs to take over the West Wing, or Wal-Mart to bulldoze private residences. . .

The American people are not sheep, eager to be led by the highest bidder. As the Supreme Court rightly noted today, “The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”

No, Henry Greville, I want to hear all the propaganda, from all sides, and then I can look into the issues myself and make up my own mind. I do like the idea of identifying funding sources—that’s just truth in advertising.