To: President Donald Trump, The New York State House, The New York State Senate, Governor Andrew Cuomo, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate
Corporations Are NOT People
In U.S. Supreme Court decisions from Santa Clara County vs. the Southern Pacific Railroad Company in 1886 to Citizens United vs. the Federal Elections Commission in 2009 corporations have been accorded the rights of natural persons even though they only exist through government charters. There is nothing in our Constitution which defines corporations as persons under the law. The Supreme Court has given them the protections of the Bill of Rights through its power to interpret the Constitution (judicial review) and following the precedents it has already established. This has allowed corporate treasuries to donate as much money as their CEO's choose to influence elections, to present falsehoods as news and to prevent regulators from inspecting their records or places of business among other things. This is antithetical to the best interest of your constituents who are natural persons--society as a whole. The only way to reverse this is to amend the Constitution in plain English to say that corporations are not persons under the law. Then the Supreme Court will not be able to reinterpret the will of the people on this matter. We the undersigned are asking you to propose and support a resolution for such an amendment to its ultimate fruition.
Why is this important?
Corporations have been using Constitutional protections designed for citizens to gain power in our elections and to make them unanswerable to citizens, workers or even the government. Only a Constitutional amendment can stop this.