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The Corporate Money Dilemma
Can't Vote - Why Should They Be Able to Donate?
Joe is Wypoxic
March 19, 2026
As Mister Mix wrote in his post this morning - “Some Thoughts on Our Common Disaster” - it’s going to take a while, and some serious major changes - to right the Ship of State we used to know as the United State of America. He quotes some good ideas from Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect.
However, there is one key concept missing from Cooper’s list: limiting money in our elections. Today, I’ll write specifically about limiting the corporate money spigot that SCOTUS opened wide with its Citizens United decision.
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Let’s quickly revisit the history of how we got here with regard to corporate “personhood” and corporate 1st Amendment rights (an oxymoron if there ever was one):
In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co. (1886), thanks to misleading notes of a clerk, the decision subsequently was used as precedent to hold that a corporation was a “natural person.” (This story was detailed in “The Theft of Human Rights,” a chapter in Thom Hartmann’s.)
In Buckley vs. Valeo (1976), SCOTUS held that contributing and spending money in campaigns and elections is a form of expression protected by the First Amendment, striking down spending limits that had been passed on a bipartisan basis by Congress.
In First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978), SCOTUS held that a Massachusetts law prohibiting most corporate contributions to ballot initiatives was unconstitutional and explicitly extended free speech rights to corporations.
And, of course, in Citizens United v. FEC (2010), in a 5-4 First Amendment decision, SCOTUS extended to corporations for the first time full rights to spend money as they wished in candidate elections — federal, state, and local — reversing a century of legal understanding and unleashing a flood of campaign cash.
Okey Dokey. Makes no sense to me, but here we are.
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Now let’s look at the history of corporations in America:
Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.
Finally, and IMHO, most importantly, corporations are nowhere to be found in the constitution. Let me repeat: corporations are not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. They are statutory entities created by law. They do not have a constitutional or an inherent right to exist.
Now, IANAL, but I have a really hard time understanding how SCOTUS - over time - decided that a statutory entity that is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution has “rights” above and beyond whatever is stated in the statutes that enable them.
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Be that as it may, as I wrote above, we are where we are. So how do we fix this mess?
Well, Robert Reich may have alerted us to the answer in his post titled How California Can Neuter “Citizens United” and Improve Democracy for Us All:
tl:dr - we do not need to amend the Constitution or have SCOTUS reverse Citizens United - as most everyone believes - to get corporate money out of politics. States can get it done by passing new state laws. See below from Reich:
As you know, corporate political spending was growing before Citizens United, but the decision opened the floodgates to the unlimited super PAC spending and undisclosed dark money we suffer from today.
Between 2008 and 2024, reported “independent” expenditures by outside groups exploded more than 28-fold — from $144 million to $4.21 billion. Unreported money also skyrocketed, with dark money groups spending millions influencing the 2024 election.
Most people assume that the only way to stop corporate and dark money in American politics is either to wait for the Supreme Court to undo Citizens United (we could wait a very long time) or amend the U.S. Constitution (which is extraordinarily difficult).
But there’s another way, and there’s a good chance it will work. It will be on the ballot next November in Montana. And there’s now a chance California could enact it!
As I’ve pointed out, individual states have the authority to limit corporate political activity and dark money spending, because states determine what powers corporations have.
In American law, corporations are creatures of state laws. For more than two centuries, the power to define their form, limits, and privilege has belonged only to the states.
Corporations have no powers at all until a state government grants them some. In the 1819 Supreme Court case Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, Chief Justice John Marshall established that:
“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence….The objects for which a corporation is created are universally such as the government wishes to promote. They are deemed beneficial to the country; and this benefit constitutes the consideration, and, in most cases, the sole consideration of the grant.”
States don’t have to grant corporations the power to spend in politics. In fact, they can decide not to give corporations that power.
This isn’t about corporate rights, as the Supreme Court determined in Citizens United. It’s about corporate powers.
When a state exercises its authority to define corporations as entities without the power to spend in politics, it will no longer be relevant whether corporations have a right to spend in politics — because without the power to do so, the right to do so has no meaning. (Delaware’s corporation code already declines to grant private foundations the power to spend in elections.)
Importantly, a state that no longer grants its corporations the power to spend in elections also denies that power to corporations chartered in the other 49 states, if they wish to do business in that state.
And what corporation doesn’t want to do business in California?
All a state needs to do is enact a law with a provision something like this:
“Every corporation operating under the laws of this state has all the corporate powers it held previously, except that nothing in this statute grants or recognizes any power to engage in election activity or ballot-issue activity.”
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This is not a pipe dream. Democrats should be focusing on state legislatures to enact corporate charter laws that explicitly prohibit corporations from spending money or otherwise engaging in any political activity.
However, I’ll add one critical element that needs to be part of these state laws. There need to be felony criminal provisions with significant repercussions (BOTH financial and serving mandatory jail time) for Owners, C-Suite Executives and any else within a corporation that has been found guilty of violating these state laws prohibiting corporate political activity. Without meaningful accountability and consequences, these new laws will otherwise be meaningless (just look at the Epstein Files law recently passed by Congress).
Let’s pressure state reps to get this done in blue states, because as Reich writes, if any domestically chartered corporation wants to do business in a blue state like California or New York or Illinois, they need to follow the laws of that state.
This is the Way.
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