The SCOTUS sided with the idea—a legal bone of contention going back to the 19th Century Robber Baron era, then picked up again by conservative ideologues in the 1970s as a route to enlarging their political influence—that corporations have the same First Amendment “free speech” rights as individuals.
Congressman Alan Grayson (D-Fla) has introduced a suite of bills, which he’s calling the Save Our Democracy package, to try to roll back this and other court decisions empowering big corporations over ordinary citizens. Meanwhile, a coalition of public interest groups have launched the site Free Speech for People in an effort to overturn the right-wing activism of justices appointed by Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. But hey, it’s only judicial activism and legislating from the bench if the judge is a Democrat...