THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF PENNSYLVANIA

HOUSE RESOLUTION

INTRODUCED BY KORTZ, BISHOP, BURNS, CALTAGIRONE, FABRIZIO, FREEMAN, GIBBONS, HARKINS, HORNAMAN, KAVULICH, KOTIK, MUNDY, M. O'BRIEN, PASHINSKI, PAYTON AND STURLA, MAY 14, 2012

REFERRED TO COMMITTEE ON STATE GOVERNMENT, MAY 14, 2012  

A RESOLUTION

Urging the Congress of the United States to propose an amendment

to the Constitution of the United States for the states'

consideration which provides that corporations are not

persons under the laws of the United States or any of its

jurisdictional subdivisions.

WHEREAS, Free and fair elections are essential to American

democracy and effective self-governance; and

WHEREAS, Individual persons are rightfully recognized as

human beings who actually vote in elections; and

WHEREAS, Corporations are legal entities that governments

create and can exist in perpetuity and simultaneously in many

nations; and

WHEREAS, Corporations do not vote in elections and should not

be categorized as persons for purposes related to elections for

public office; and

WHEREAS, Corporations are not mentioned in the Constitution

of the United States, nor have Congress and the states

recognized corporations as legal persons in any subsequent

constitutional amendment; and

WHEREAS, During the 1885-1886 United States Supreme Court

term, in the midst of oral arguments leading to the decisions

Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394 (1886),

Chief Justice Waite stated that all the justices agreed that the

Fourteenth Amendment's prohibition on a state denying equal

protection to a person applies to a state's treatment of private

corporations; and

WHEREAS, This brief but extraordinarily significant comment

by Chief Justice Waite sanctioned private corporations to sue

municipal and state governments for adopting laws that violate a

corporation's rights even though those laws serve to protect and

defend the rights of human persons; and

WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has continued to

adhere to this legal position in its jurisprudence for more than

a century and most recently applied it to its decision Citizens

United v. the Federal Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876 (2010),

that eliminated many restrictions, including any total

prohibition, on corporate spending in the electoral process; and

WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court in Citizens United 

has created a new and unequal playing field between human beings

and corporations with respect to campaign financing, negating

over a century of precedent prohibiting corporate contributions

to Federal election campaigns dating to the Tillman Act of 1907;

and

WHEREAS, The Citizens United decision has forced candidates

for political office to divert attention from the interests and

needs of their human constituents in order to raise sufficient

campaign funds for elections; and 

WHEREAS, Corporations are not, and have never been, human

beings and therefore are rightfully subservient to human beings

and the governments that are their creators; and

WHEREAS, The profits and institutional survival of large

corporations are often in direct conflict with the essential

needs and rights of human beings; and

WHEREAS, Large corporations have used their so-called rights

to successfully seek judicial reversal of democratically enacted

laws passed at the Federal, State and municipal levels aimed at

curbing corporate abuse; and

WHEREAS, These judicial decisions have rendered

democratically elected governments ineffective in protecting

their citizens against corporate harm to the environment,

health, workers, independent business and regional and local

economies; and

WHEREAS, Large corporations own most of America's mass media

and employ the media to loudly express the corporate political

agenda and to convince Americans that the primary role of human

beings is that of consumers rather than sovereign citizens with

democratic rights and responsibilities; and

WHEREAS, The only way to reverse this intolerable societal

reality is to amend the Constitution of the United States to

define persons as human beings and not corporations; therefore

be it

RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives of the

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania urge Congress to propose an

amendment to the Constitution of the United States for the

states' consideration which provides that corporations are not

persons under the laws of the United States or any of its

jurisdictional subdivisions; and be it further

RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be transmitted to

the presiding officers of each house of Congress and to each

member of Congress from Pennsylvania.