Corporate Constitutional Rights Should Be Focus of Last Presidential Debate

Donald Trump and Joe Biden need to address the economic, environmental, political and social harms caused by corporate constitutional rights at Thursday's last presidential debate, asserts Move to Amend. The national grassroots coalition has been organizing for the past decade to pass a 28th Constitutional Amendment that would abolish all constitutional rights for corporate entities and would end the legal doctrine that political money spent in elections is equivalent to First Amendment-protected free speech.

Calls on the candidates and the Commission on Presidential Debates to merely create a civil debate format and an agenda focusing on urgent current issues is a massive disservice to the American people if the abuses to people, communities, the environment and the quest for democracy from Supreme Court-invented constitutional rights for corporations are not directly addressed.

Corporate constitutional rights are a root cause of why so many issues that the public supports never becomes reality. Medicare for All has been blocked by insurance and other medical-related corporations which have hijacked First Amendment "political free speech rights" by investing in political campaigns. Consumer's right to know potentially dangerous ingredients in food and other commercial products have been thwarted by agribusiness and chemical corporations claiming First Amendment "rights not to speak." After lying about climate change for decades, fossil fuel corporations now try to avoid liability for the harm they have caused by invoking multiple constitutional "rights." Effort by local community leaders to provide preferential support to local businesses over "big box" merchants during the pandemic would be overturned in court, as in the past, by corporate claims of "discrimination" under the Fourteenth Amendment, which was intended to apply exclusively to free slaves.

The group says that candidates and the Commission should review it's recently produced series: The Case Against Corporate Constitutional Rights. The three-part series documents how corporate constitutional rights have no legal basis; have fueled the climate crisis; have negatively affected property rights, environmental protection, worker safety, and community health; and have concealed important information from consumers and employees.

Move to Amend is the main organizational catalyst of the We the People Amendment (H.J.R. 48). The proposed Amendment, sponsored by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) has 74 House co-sponsors. More than 680 political jurisdictions across the nation have passed resolutions or citizen-driven ballot initiatives calling for the amendment.

For more information about Move to Amend, email info@movetoamend.org or call 916-318-8040.