ABA Journal - Along With Political Speech, Many Companies Also Claim they Have Religious Liberty Rights

By David L. Hudson Jr. ABAJournal.com

Corporations, like individuals, have the right to engage in political speech, the U.S. Supreme Court said three years ago. The “corporate identity” of a speaker did not justify a reduced level of free speech protection, wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

“No sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of nonprofit or for-profit corporations,” Justice Kennedy wrote. . . .

By February, at least 48 lawsuits with more than 140 plaintiffs had challenged the act, says Edward White, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative group that is handling five suits and has filed amicus briefs in 16 others.

“The raft of ACA cases raises the specter of doctrinal inconsistency within First Amendment jurisprudence between freedom of expression and freedom of religion,” says First Amendment expert Clay Calvert of the University of Florida. “If Citizens United means that secular, for-profit corporations possess the right to freely express political viewpoints by spending money, then at first glance it seems to follow that such corporations also possess the right to freely exercise religious beliefs by refraining from spending money.”. . .

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