A GROUP of people has the same basic rights, as a group, that the individual members have.
Any group, including corporations.
Corporations are not individual “people” but a legal construction. An individual has rights.
How does a corporation have an opinion to express unless it is explicitly unanimous? Why should a legal construction have rights?
So the Girl Scouts has no rights? no right to free speech, to free assembly, to freely publish anything?
So local law enforcement could break into a church meeting and arrest the preacher who said something the mayor doesn't like, and they have no appeal to the 1st Amendment right to free speech and free assembly?
Or the cops could break up a PTA meeting, or any gathering the Chief of Police disagrees with, to suppress it, and that group has no appeal to the First Amendment?
WTF are you babbling about? Girl Scouts are people.
Yes, but so is the group they are members of. This group Girl Scouts as a collective has the right to publish, to promote a cause, even promote something political (if it so chooses, though it generally does not).
Yes, but so is the congregation/church s/he preaches for, or who hires him/her and gives him/her the platform from which to preach and crusade for a cause. The group of persons is recognized as having the rights granted to "persons" in the Constitution.
A PTA meeting is a meeting of people.
And that meeting or group is people, covered by the 1st Amendment. Its right to free speech is basic, because "the people" in the 1st Amendment includes GROUPS of people as part of its meaning. This right of the PTA could be exercised by it in many ways, such as arranging meetings, maybe paying rent, out of the PTA's assets, or also by publishing something, even something political or controversial. As individuals, those PTA members might not have the assets to pay for it, but as a group of people pooling their resources they have the power to do it. And in other ways too the group has extra power, and with it the right, to do those things protected by the 1st Amendment.
A corporation is ultimately owned by people but that no more makes it a person than my owning a car makes it a person.
OK, but no one has said your owning something is what makes it a person. The reason an object like a corporation/group is people is not because it's owned by people but because that owned object is composed of people. Whether it's owned by someone is not the point -- that it's composed of people is the point.
E.g., a professional sports team is people, a bank is people, a radio or TV show is people, a sweatshop is people, a brothel is people, a school is people, a church is people, a marketplace is people, a parade is people, a Broadway show is people, a commission is people, a work crew is people, a platoon is people, an office staff is people, a business is people. Every group of people, such as these, is people and has 1st Amendment rights, and it can be bought or sold or dissolved or liquidated by its owner (if it's owned by someone). But also, a group might not have an owner, but it still has its 1st Amendment rights, because it's a group of people.
A GROUP, not only an individual, has free speech rights.
I found the following quote, in the opinion of Justice Kennedy, saying that groups, including corporations, do have 1st Amendment rights, because the Constitutional protection (for "people") includes groups (or a group) of people, not just an individual. And to single out certain kinds of groups (e.g. "corporations" and "labor unions") for special treatment or exclusion violates their Constitutional protection, which extends to ALL people (meaning both individuals and groups of individuals), with none to be excluded as ineligible or as unprotected in comparison to any others.
Under the rationale of these precedents,
political speech does not lose First Amendment protection “simply because its source is a corporation.” Bellotti, supra, at 784; see
Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. v.
Public Util. Comm’n of Cal. ,
475 U. S. 1, 8 (1986) (plurality opinion) (“The identity of the speaker is not decisive in determining whether speech is protected. Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the ‘discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas’ that the
First Amendment seeks to foster” (quoting
Bellotti, 435 U. S., at 783)).
The Court has thus rejected the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not “natural persons.” Id., at 776; see
id. , at 780, n. 16. Cf.
id. , at 828 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting).
Whatever "natural persons" means, it is not a proper criterion or standard for determining who is or is not covered by the 1st Amendment. So if someone (or some group) is singled out as "not natural" etc., this cannot be a basis for denying them 1st Amendment protection.
Whether GROUPS are also "people"
Simply put, Citizens United basically declared that
ALL groups are people, including corporations.
BUT -- (no general rule applies perfectly, or is followed perfectly).
And this rule -- ALL groups are people and have basic rights -- might not prevail in every conceivable case. The Court may not be 100% consistent in applying this rule to all possible cases. E.g., there are discriminations against foreigners, which might wrongly violate this good rule that everyone is covered by the basic 1st Amendment rights, with no exceptions. But in general this is a good rule or principle the Court upheld in the Citizens United case -- that every group of people is included in "the people" who have 1st Amendment rights, and corporations cannot be singled out and excluded as an exception, like the election reform act of 2002 tried to do.
A corporation can legally be bought and sold, but . . .
No, not a non-profit corporation. And your slogan is "corporations are not people," not "for-profit corporations are not people." You can't make this argument unless you change your slogan to: "for-profit corporations are not people" to make it accurate. So far no one agrees to change the slogan. And the company Citizens United is not a for-profit corporation but is a non-profit. So "corporations" are not distinguished by the feature that they can be legally bought and sold. Only some can be, but others cannot be bought and sold.
. . . corporation can legally be bought and sold, people cannot.
In professional sports people can be bought and sold. E.g., professional sports teams routinely buy and sell players, sending them across country to the team that purchased them or traded another player for them. Of course a player may refuse to cooperate with this, but that could end their career -- it's in their interest to comply -- they get rich in a system which buys and sells them as property.
It all depends on the need, on the market, on the supply of and demand for the people in question who might be bought and sold or traded. These people being traded themselves are better off in a system which can trade them like objects for sale to the highest bidder etc.
But further, not every for-profit corporation can be sold. Sometimes a sale can be blocked by various means, and so in those cases the corporation cannot be sold. So this is not a fundamental difference distinguishing people from corporations. Some people are bought and sold, and some corporations cannot be sold, so this rule is inconsistent and does not essentially distinguish corporations from people but is only a generalization that often corporations can be sold and people usually cannot be.
So still no one is explaining what distinguishes corporations from other groups, such that "corporations are not people" -- this slogan remains a knee-jerk impulse only, not anything about corporations or about who is and who is "not people."
