That's not what CU held. The idea that corporations have legal personhood with some degree of rights is much, much older than Citizens United.
Citizens United was a non-profit corporation that created Hillary: The Movie which was critical of Hillary Clinton. They wanted to distribute it shortly before the 2008 primaries. The Federal Election Campaign Act prohibited corporations from using general funds for electioneering or speech that advocates for the election or defeat of a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of an election.
The Court held that the First Amendment prohibited the government from stopping an incorporated association from independently spending its own money for political advocacy of a candidate. To put it another way, if I can spend my money to advocate for or against a candidate, why can I not get together with some friends to pool our money and incorporate to do the same? If this had gone the other way would you be okay with a corporation being forbidden from releasing a video critical of Trump shortly before the 2024 election?
Nobody wants to be the first one who cant pool large sums of money to influence politics, but, yes, im okay with not being allowed to spend millions of dollars to influence our politics. Our society has too much wealth inequality for that to be a good idea.
Say that I hold the political that the US should provide more humanitarian aid to Gaza. If I raise a bunch of money for this cause, can I use that money to make movies about the poor conditions in Gaza? Can I buy a full page in the New York Times with information about the crisis in Gaza? Can I use the money to run ads advocating my position on Gaza? Can I use the money to buy ads that support candidates that share my position on this issue?
This is basically what super PACs do. Of course I don't want it so that you can deliver a bunch of gold bars to a senator in exchange for their vote on a bill, but was illegal before citizens united and remains illegal after.
For me, I don't see how you can reasonably enforce some rule against using "money to influence politics" without also having some central entity that gets to police everyone's political speech, and that scares me.
This would mean that all media companies in the US would be prevented from publishing anything that could be perceived as negative about any candidate running for elected office, regardless of factual basis and regardless of if it were satire.
A candidate would simply go to any circuit court judge and get an injunction against the media company. If the media company did not comply, the judge would find the officers in contempt. Marshals would then arrest and throw the companies officers in jail indefinitely until they complied.
That's what you're asking for. It's genuinely stupid. I say this as someone that would declare a national emergency on day 1 of being elected just to have the Air Force turn most media company HQs into smoldering craters.
Yes, election coverage and endorsements and politically biased media did not exist before Citizens United. None of the dozens of democracies with political spending limits have political news coverage.
It doesn't have to, there are tons of restrictions that could be used to improve the status quo. Limiting how close to an election these things can be released. Limiting how much money an individual can contribute. Limiting how much money a single organization can spend. We have levers, we choose not to use them.
Except that's not how it was in 2004 before Citizens United. So.. yes, in your made up hypothetical it doesn't look good. But in reality, where we all live, it worked better than the current rules
