Written Testimony in Support of Nevada Senate Joint Resolution 4
April 3, 2017
Nevada Senate Committee on Legislative Operations & Elections
Janette Dean, University of Nevada, Reno Alumna
I, Janette Dean, am a proud alumna of the University of Nevada, Reno where I focused on
human rights, environmental policy, and social change to earn my Political Science and
Sociology degrees in May 2015. I strongly support Senate Joint Resolution 4 being introduced
this 79th Session by Honorable Senator Nicole Cannizzaro which would help overturn the
Supreme Court ‘s 2010 Citizens United decision through a Nevada state resolution for a
Constitutional Amendment regulating independent political expenditures by corporations. Many
of us Northern Nevada residents who began working in 2012 on building more awareness and
support in Nevada for a Constitutional Amendment were crushed in 2013 when Senate Joint
Resolution 11 calling for the amendment was prevented passage in the Nevada Senate by just
one vote. As a UNR Legislative Intern in 2013, my request to help introduce the resolution had
been honored by primary sponsor, Senator Pat Spearman, and she did her best to ease the
agony of defeat by telling me that she had been taken by surprise, too, but we should take
assurance that “we live to fight another day.” Senator Spearman knows that resolute
persistence is the key to achieving important milestones such as the Equal Rights Amendment
that passed Congress in 1972 but has yet to be fully ratified by 38 states. Nevada became the
36th state just this last March 22, 2017 after its last 2015 defeat because Senator Spearman
persisted on it for me as one of the lead Nevada ratification grassroots organizers since 2014
and for ALL ERA supporters and organizers nationwide, and we did indeed achieve ratification
after 45 years in Nevada! Well, today is the day we now live to fight again for Nevada’s also
much-needed Senate Joint Resolution 4 to help overturn the undemocratic Citizens United
decision. I have therefore resubmitted our Nevada constituents 107-page report from 2012 with
1) its still valid reasons about the need for a Constitutional Amendment, 2) its reference to 1,087
Nevada signatures on a 2012 MoveOn petition for an Amendment, and 3) its 68 pages of 1,879
Nevada signatures from a related 2012 petition that asked the municipal district of Carson City
to pass a resolution in support of a Constitutional Amendment before the 2013 Legislature
began. Even though 18 states instead of just 11 in 2012 have now passed resolutions for an
amendment–including the three Western Coast states as well as the Western interior states of
Montana, New Mexico and Colorado–our 2012 report and its many early signatures for a
Constitutional Amendment are a helpful complement to all the new signatures in support of
SJR4, including mine, that are being submitted today by Public Citizen, one of the most
important organizations leading on this issue since the 2010 Supreme Court ruling. Public
Citizen has been a valuable online source for many of us Americans as well as for state leaders
with its several key documents explaining the folly of the 2010 ruling. Because the detrimental
effects of the Citizens United ruling also make it a bipartisan issue, I’d also like to share some
very illuminating comments by former 30-year Republican U.S. Representative James Leach
from Iowa (1977-2007) in a 2013 essay that he wrote for the American Academy of Arts &
Science during his fifth and final year as Chairman for the National Endowment of the
Humanities. He said:
Over our tumultuous history, the U.S. Supreme Court has generally been at
the forefront of advancing justice and protecting the rule of law. But from
time to time, our politics and the Court have been out of step with our
deepest ideals. For almost nine decades after our founders signed the
Declaration of Independence, affirming that all men are created equal, a
number of states sanctioned slavery; and until the Civil War, the Supreme
Court formally upheld this egregious assault on human dignity.
Brazenly, in Citizens United, the Court employed parallel logic to the
syllogism embedded in the most repugnant ruling it ever made, the
1857 Dred Scott decision. To justify slavery, the Court in Dred Scott defined
a class of human beings as private property. To magnify corporate power a
century-and-a-half later, it defined a class of private property (corporations)
as people. Ironies abound. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,
the mid-nineteenth-century Court could see no oppression in an institution
that allowed individuals to be bought and sold. In the Citizens United ruling,
despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Court implied that
corporations were somehow oppressed – in this case considered to be
censored – and therefore should be freed to buy political influence and sell
opposing candidates down a river of negativity.
How are corporations oppressed? Do corporate leaders not have free
speech and the right to give campaign contributions like all other citizens?
Have they and the political action committees (PACs) that they control not
already been overempowered to infuse millions into the political process? Is
it an accident that as the influence of moneyed interests has increased in
American politics, the gap between the rich and poor has widened?
To advance the sophistic argument that more money in campaigns equates
to more democracy, the Court had to employ a linguistic gyration. It
presumed that money is speech and that a corporation is an individual. But
where in any dictionary or in any founding documents are these
equivalencies made?
Speech is the act of expressing thoughts, feelings, or perceptions by the
articulation of words. It is a vocalized form of human communication. In
pejorative jargon, money may “talk,” but precisely defined, money is a
medium of exchange, a measure of value, or a means of payment. In the
manner it is used in politics it can be considered a campaign contribution. It
is not “speech” in terms of what any strict constructionist could conceivably
believe the First Amendment addresses.
A corporation is an artificial creation of the state, which in turn is a creation
of the people. To vest an inanimate entity with constitutionally protected
political rights makes mockery of our individual rights heritage. While
corporations as a “legal fiction” have been given analogous status to
individuals in aspects of commercial law, citizenship rights are of a very
different nature. A corporation cannot vote or run for office. The inspiring
words of our founders were about free men born with inalienable rights. It is
they who speak. It is they who can assemble. It is they who are considered
equal among each other.
To hold that a corporation is a person with citizenship rights simply does not
square with the Declaration of Independence. All men may be created equal
in relation to each other, but not necessarily in relation to corporations or,
under Citizens United, in relation to how corporations may empower some
individuals relative to others. There is great inequality between corporations,
no equality of individual and corporate “personhood,” and no equality of
individuals when one with many corporate ties may have more capacity to
influence decision-making than one with none or just a few.
Former Representative Leach’s words certainly ring true to me (with the one caveat that the
principle that “all men are created equal” must better include American women through the
Equal Rights Amendment). I therefore hope the majority of Nevada’s Democratic and
Republican legislators will 1) also reach Mr. Leach’s proper conclusion that freedom of speech
is meant for individuals in a true democracy, not artificial entities, and that they will 2) wisely
choose to help pass SJR4. In addition to Nevada’s legislators, I also encourage Nevada
Governor Brian Sandoval to be bipartisan and express his public support for the needed SJR4
resolution just as he did on March 7 for the SJR2 resolution to ratify the Equal Rights
Amendment even though his signature is not required on state resolutions. Thank you.
1
Leach, Jim. Citizens United: Robbing Americas of Its Democratic Idealism under American Democracy & the
Common Good. Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 2013.
https://www.amacad.org/content/publications/pubContent.aspx?d=1047