REFERENCE TITLE: Citizens United decision; repeal.

State of Arizona Senate Fiftieth Legislature Second Regular Session 2012

SCR 1040

Introduced by Senators Gallardo, Cajero Bedford, Landrum Taylor, Lujan; Representative Chabin: Senators Jackson, Lopez; Representative Alston

 

A concurrent RESOLUTION

 

supporting the right of arizona's citizens to vote on whether to instruct their congressional representatives to propose an amendment to the United states constitution to repeal the "citizens united" decision.

 

(TEXT OF BILL BEGINS ON NEXT PAGE)

 

Whereas, the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights are intended to protect the rights of individual human beings; and

Whereas, corporations are not mentioned in the Constitution and the people have neither granted constitutional rights to corporations nor decreed that corporations have authority that exceeds the authority of "We the People"; and

Whereas, corporations can and do make important contributions to our society using powerful advantages that government has wisely granted them, but the Arizona Legislature does not consider them to be real people; and

Whereas, United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, in a 1938 dissenting opinion, stated, "I do not believe the word 'person' in the Fourteenth Amendment includes corporations"; and

Whereas, the United States Supreme Court recognized in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) the threat to a republican form of government posed by "the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas"; and     

Whereas, the United States Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) reversed the decision in Austin and the portion of McConnell v. Federal Elections Commission that upheld bans on corporate and labor treasury funds for electioneering.  The Citizens United decision presents a serious threat to self-government by rolling back previous bans on corporate spending in the electoral process and allows unlimited corporate spending to influence elections, candidate selection, policy decisions and public debate; and

Whereas, the opinion of the four dissenting justices in Citizens United noted that corporations have special privileges not enjoyed by real people, such as limited liability, perpetual life and favorable treatment of the accumulation and distribution of assets, that allow them to spend huge sums on campaign messages that have little or no correlation with the beliefs held by real people; and

Whereas, the law obligates corporations to put profits for shareholders ahead of concerns for the greatest good of society while individual shareholders as real people balance their narrow self-interest and broader public interest when making political decisions; and

Whereas, corporations have used the artificial "rights" bestowed on them by the courts to overturn democratically enacted laws that  municipal, state and federal governments passed to curb corporate abuse, thereby impairing the ability of local governments to protect their citizens against corporate harms to the environment, to consumers, to workers, to independent businesses and to local and regional economies; and

Whereas, the United States Supreme Court held in Buckley v. Valeo (1976) that the appearance of corruption justified some limits on contributions to candidates, but it wrongly rejected other fundamental interests that the citizens of Arizona find compelling such as creating a level playing field and ensuring that all citizens, regardless of wealth, have an opportunity to have their political views heard; and

Whereas, federal courts in Buckley and in SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission (2010) overturned spending and contribution limits on independent campaigns that helped level the political playing field because they concluded that the threat of corruption was only applicable to direct contributions to candidates; and

Whereas, the United States Supreme Court in FirstNational Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978) and Citizens Against Rent Control v. City of Berkeley (1986) rejected limits on contributions to ballot measure campaigns because the Court concluded they posed no threat of candidate corruption; and

Whereas, former United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens observed in Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC (2000) that "money is property, it is not speech"; and

Whereas, a February 2010 Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 80 percent of Americans oppose the Citizens United ruling; and

Whereas, Article V of the United States Constitution empowers and obligates the people of the United States of America to use the constitutional amendment process to correct those egregiously wrong decisions of the United States Supreme Court that go to the heart of our democracy and the republican form of self-government; and

Whereas, Arizona's citizens have the right to instruct their congressional representatives, as direct agents of the people, to do everything within their delegated authority to propose an amendment to the United States Constitution that would clarify several misinterpretations of the Constitution by divided actions of the United States Supreme Court that have culminated in the wrongly decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.  This amendment should make clear that corporations have only the privileges bestowed on them by their charters, by state and federal law and by the real people who are their shareholders or members.  Further, the amendment should clarify that money is property, not speech, and that in order to ensure that all citizens, regardless of wealth, have an opportunity to express their views to their fellow citizens and to their government on a level playing field, the amount of speech that any one citizen may purchase with this property should be limited to levels that do not overwhelm other citizens.

Therefore

Be it resolved by the Senate of the State of Arizona, the House of Representatives concurring:

That the Legislature supports the inclusion on the November 2012 ballot of a proposal that would allow Arizona's citizens to instruct their congressional representatives to propose an amendment that would repeal the Citizens United decision.