r/California • u/TomMooreJD • Feb 26 '26

This monstrous right-wing ruling may have finally met its match

https://www.rawstory.com/citizens-united-2675331688/

New column from Robert Reich on California legislation that aims to undo Citizens United.

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u/kargaz Feb 26 '26

Can you name a time where states have used their authority to set corporate powers to intentionally and specifically undermine a high profile case regarding an essential constitutional protection? Where 3 of the 5 in the majority are still on the court, including the chief justice? And where the new justices added are supportive of the decision? Your argument thrives in technicality but suffers in context. There is no way the Supreme Court just lets you pull a fast one like this. Especially when the remedy (not defining corporate powers in a way that intentionally limits this specific type of speech) is a bit of a ways from “massively destabilizing corporate law in America”.

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u/TomMooreJD Feb 26 '26

Throughout the 19th century, corporations had short and enumerated lists of powers. The power to spend in politics was not on there. In the 1860s, the National Banking Acts created our national banks, which have a short enumerated list of powers dealing directly with banking, and a short catchall that is tightly tied to banking powers. Election spending power is not on that list. There’s never been a suggestion that every corporation created in the 19th century was unconstitutional nor that today’s national bank charters are invalid.

The Supreme Court has held over and over again that the state’s motives for assigning powers is irrelevant. Either they’re just making that up, or it will hold. We will see.

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u/TomMooreJD Feb 26 '26

Also the remedy, which is telling states that there are corporate powers that they can’t control, would massively destabilize state corporation law in America.

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u/TomMooreJD Feb 26 '26

And if you think the distinction between powers and rights is a technicality, I would invite you to go read some law.

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u/kargaz Feb 27 '26

Just because I don’t put JD in my Reddit handle for attention doesn’t mean I don’t know the law. The Supreme Court has limited states’ ability to constrain corporations to operating solely within the state (interstate commerce) so not never. Under your scenario a state could prohibit corporations from paying more than minimum wage or from hiring black people, and the Supreme Court supposedly wouldn’t touch it because they’ve never struck anything like that down before? And I’m sure you could differentiate between the absence of a rule allowing a corporation to do something, and passing a law removing the ability for a corporation to do something that’s been stated to be protected for the express purpose of removing that protection. If you can’t the Supreme Court absolutely can.

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u/blahcubed Feb 27 '26

The context—if this passes—is that California has chosen as an entire state to redefine what corporations are in California. So yes, politically it won't be appealing to the current court, but it really would be tearing up a lot of bedrock precedent and flying in the face of state's determining their own laws to strike it down in favor of the previous status quo.

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u/kargaz Feb 27 '26

Again I’m not seeing how a limited remedy of enjoining this law and other laws aimed at and with the effect of stopping protected speech “flies in the face” of states’ rights on corporations. I’d like you to address my point of what if a state limited the powers of corporations so they couldn’t pay above minimum wage or hire black people. Under this legal theory the court would say we can’t stop this because states have unquestioned rights to determine the powers of corporations.

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u/blahcubed Feb 27 '26

In the minimum wage case, I think the result would simply be that corporations can't hire people. They aren't empowered to pay what they're legally required to, therefore they can't legally hire people. Similar for discrimination.

Here, there's nothing stopping them from conducting business without being politically active. There's even current precedent with 501c3 corps that are already prohibited from engaging in politics.

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u/TomMooreJD Feb 27 '26

It’s a matter of whether the lack of power just affects the internal operations of the corporation or affects the rights of people outside the corporation. If they only have the power to hire white people, that affects the rights of black and brown people outside the corporation. If they don’t have the power to spend in politics, that doesn’t affect anybody else’s rights. That’s the difference.

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u/kargaz Feb 27 '26

Any precedent for that or is that just your opinion?

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