Citizens United Opinion Widens Corporate “Personhood” Rights

Media Contacts

Arizona PIRG

By deciding that corporations should be treated in the same manner as ordinary citizens and be allowed to spend the massive amounts of money they accumulate on direct attack ads for or against Members of Congress, today the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizen’s United vs. Federal Election Commission will significantly expand the role that the most powerful corporations play in election financing. 

“A corporation is not, nor has it ever been, a person with voting rights. Corporations are not our neighbors, they cannot get married, they cannot die, and a corporation is not part of “We the People,” stated Diane E. Brown, Executive Director of the Arizona Public Interest Research Group (Arizona PIRG). “It is essential that we fix this misstep by the courts, before we see the landscape of elections financing washed away in a raging flashflood of corporate money.”

Arizona PIRG is working to help move a legislative fix to slam shut the floodgates that today’s decision has opened.