John Paul Stevens

“ To eliminate voluntary associations-not only including powerful ones, but especially including powerful ones from the public debate is either to augment the always dominant power of government or to impoverish the public debate. ”

“ By deciding to operate as a nonprofit corporation rather than an unincorporated association, a group does not forfeit its First Amendment protection to participate in political discourse.
An independent ground for invalidating this statute is the blanket exemption for media corporations. It is beyond per-adventure that the media could not be prohibited from speaking about candidate qualifications. The First Amendment would not tolerate a law prohibiting a newspaper or television network from spending on political comment because it operates through a corporation. ”

“ The majority provides only conjecture. All censorship is suspect; but censorship based on vague surmise is not permissible in any case.
The Act, as the State itself says, prevents a nonprofit corporate speaker from using its own funds to inform the voting public that a particular candidate has a good or bad voting record on issues of interest to the association's adherents. Though our era may not be alone in deploring the lack of mechanisms for holding candidates accountable for the votes they cast, that lack of accountability is one of the major concerns of our time. ”

“ One need not become a member of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce or the Sierra Club in order to earn a living. To the extent that members disagree with a nonprofit corporation's policies, they can seek change from within, withhold financial support, cease to associate with the group, or form a rival group of their own. Allowing government to use the excuse of protecting shareholder rights to stifle the speech of private, voluntary organizations undermines the First Amendment. ”

“ But if one believes in the Court's rationale of "compelling state need" to prevent amassed corporate wealth from skewing the political debate, surely that "unique role" of the press does not give Michigan justification for excluding media corporations from coverage, but provides especially strong reason to include them. Amassed corporate wealth that regularly sits astride the ordinary channels of information is much more likely to produce the New Corruption (too much of one point of view) than amassed corporate wealth that is generally busy making money elsewhere. ”

“ Despite all the talk about "corruption and the appearance of corruption"-evils that are not significantly implicated and that can be avoided in many other ways-it is entirely obvious that the object of the law we have approved today is not to prevent wrongdoing but to prevent speech. Since those private associations known as corporations have so much money, they will speak so much more, and their views will be given inordinate prominence in election campaigns. ”

“ The limitation is of course entirely irrational. Why is it perfectly all right if advocacy by an individual billionaire is out of proportion with "actual public support" for his positions? There is no explanation, except the effort I described at the outset of this discussion to make one valid proposition out of two invalid ones: When the vessel labeled "corruption" begins to founder under weight too great to be logically sustained, the argumentation jumps to the good ship "special privilege"; and when that in turn begins to go down, it returns to "corruption." ”

“ A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today's mass society requires the expenditure of money. ”

“ But the concept that government may restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment, which was designed 'to secure "the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources," ' and ' "to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people." ”

“ Why should the Michigan voters in the 93d House District be deprived of the information that private associations owning and operating a vast percentage of the industry of the State, and employing a large number of its citizens, believe that the election of a particular candidate is important to their prosperity? Contrary to the Court's suggestion, the same point cannot effectively be made through corporate PACs to which individuals may voluntarily contribute. ”

“ Those who thought that the First Amendment exists to protect all points of view in candidate elections will be disillusioned by the Court's opinion today; for that protection is given only to a preferred class of nonprofit corporate speakers: small, single issue nonprofit corporations that pass the Court's own vague test for determining who are the favored participants in the electoral process. ”

“ When the members of an aristocratic community adopt a new opinion or conceive a new sentiment, they give it a station, as it were, beside themselves, upon the lofty platform where they stand; and opinions or sentiments so conspicuous to the eyes of the multitude are easily introduced into the minds or hearts of all around. ”

“ Certain uses of "massive wealth" in the electoral process-whether or not the wealth is the result of "special advantages" conferred by the State-pose a substantial risk of corruption which constitutes a compelling need for the regulation of speech. Such a risk plainly exists when the wealth is given directly to the political candidate, to be used under his direction and control. We held in Buckley v. Valeo, supra, however, that independent expenditures to express the political views of individuals and associations do not raise a sufficient threat of corruption to justify prohibition. ”

“ But this distinction rests on the fallacy that the source of the speaker's funds is somehow relevant to the speaker's right of expression or society's interest in hearing what the speaker has to say. There is no reason that the free speech rights of an individual or of an association of individuals should turn on the circumstance that funds used to engage in the speech come from a corporation. Many persons can trace their funds to corporations, if not in the form of donations, then in the form of dividends, interest, or salary. ”

“ But even if the object of the prohibition could plausibly be portrayed as the protection of shareholders (which the Court's opinion, at least, does not even assert) , that would not suffice as a "compelling need" to support this blatant restriction upon core political speech. A person becomes a member of that form of association known as a for-profit corporation in order to pursue economic objectives, i.e., to make money. Some corporate charters may specify the line of commerce to which the company is limited, but even that can be amended by shareholder vote. ”

“ Newspapers, television networks, and other media may be owned by parent corporations with multiple business interests. Nothing in the statutory scheme prohibits a business corporate parent from directing its newspaper to support or oppose a particular candidate. The Act not only permits that discretion or control, but makes it a crime for a public-interest nonprofit corporation to bring to light such activity if to do so infers candidate support or opposition. I can find no permissible basis under the First Amendment for the States to make this unsupported distinction among corporate speakers. ”

“ There can be no doubt that if a State were to enact a statute empowering an administrative board to determine which corporations could place candidate advertisements in newspapers and which could not, with authority to enforce the guidelines the Court adopts today to distinguish between the Massachusetts Citizens for Life and the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the statute would be held unconstitutional. The First Amendment does not permit courts to exercise speech suppression authority denied to legislatures. ”

“ If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society. Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association. ”

“ We have said: "Corruption is a subversion of the political process" whereby " [e] lected officials are influenced to act contrary to their obligations of office by the prospect of financial gain. . . ." NCPAC, supra, at 497, 105 S.Ct., at 1468. In contrast, the interest touted by the majority is the impermissible one of altering political debate by muting the impact of certain speakers.
The regulatory mechanism adopted by the Michigan statute is aimed at reducing the quantity of political speech, a rationale endorsed by today's majority. The First Amendment rests on quite the opposite theory. ”

“ Those individuals who form that type of voluntary association known as a corporation are, to be sure, given special advantages-notably, the immunization of their personal fortunes from liability for the actions of the association-that the State is under no obligation to confer. ”

“ The contention that prohibiting overt advocacy for or against a political candidate satisfies a "compelling need" to avoid "corruption" is easily dismissed. As we said in Buckley, " [i] t would naively underestimate the ingenuity and resourcefulness of persons and groups desiring to buy influence to believe that they would have much difficulty devising expenditures that skirted the restriction on express advocacy of election or defeat but nevertheless benefited the candidate's campaign." ”

“ Under the Michigan law, any person or group other than a corporation may engage in political debate over candidate elections; but corporations, even nonprofit corporations that have unique views of vital importance to the electorate, must remain mute. ”

“ Although some closely held corporations, just as some publicly held ones, may not have accumulated significant amounts of wealth, they receive from the State the special benefits conferred by the corporate structure and present the potential for distorting the political process. ”

“ The absence of prearrangement and coordination of an expenditure with the candidate or his agent not only undermines the value of the expenditure to the candidate, but also alleviates the danger that expenditures will be given as a quid pro quo for improper commitments from the candidate. ”

“ A wooden rule prohibiting independent expenditures by nonprofit corporations that receive funds from business corporations invites discriminatory distinctions. The principled approach is to acknowledge that where political speech is concerned, freedom to speak extends to all nonprofit corporations, not the special favorites of a majority of this Court. ”

“ The argument relied on by the majority, that media corporations are in the business of communicating and other corporations are not, is unsatisfying. All corporations communicate with the public to some degree, whether it is their business or not; and communication is of particular importance for non-profit corporations. ”

“ It is important to the message that it represents the views of Michigan's leading corporations as corporations, occupying the "lofty platform" that they do within the economic life of the State-not just the views of some other voluntary associations to which some of the corporations' shareholders belong. ”

“ The Michigan statute prohibits independent expenditures by a nonprofit corporate speaker to express its own views about candidate qualifications. Independent expenditures are entitled to greater protection than campaign contributions. ”

“ The corporate actions to which the shareholder exposes himself, therefore, include many things that he may find politically or ideologically uncongenial: investment in South Africa, operation of an abortion clinic, publication of a pornographic magazine, or even publication of a newspaper that adopts absurd political views and makes catastrophic political endorsements. ”

“ Such media corporations not only have vastly greater power to perpetrate the evil of overinforming, they also have vastly greater opportunity. General Motors, after all, will risk a stockholder suit if it makes a political endorsement that is not plausibly tied to its ability to make money for its shareholders. ”

“ Worse still will be the case if the government really believes itself interested in preventing all circulation of ideas; it will then stand motionless and oppressed by the heaviness of voluntary torpor. ”

“ If narrow tailoring means anything, surely it must mean that action taken to counter the effect of amassed "war chests" must be targeted, if possible, at amassed "war chests." And surely such targeting is possible-either in the manner accomplished by the provision that we invalidated in Buckley, i.e., by limiting the prohibition to independent expenditures above a certain amount, or in some other manner, e.g., by limiting the expenditures of only those corporations with more than a certain amount of net worth or annual profit. ”