BILL REQ. #: H-1268.1
State of Washington | 62nd Legislature | 2011 Regular Session |
Read first time 02/01/11. Referred to Committee on Judiciary.
TO THE HONORABLE BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE AND THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, AND TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
UNITED STATES, IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:
We, your Memorialists, the Senate and House of Representatives of
the State of Washington, in legislative session assembled, respectfully
represent and petition as follows:
WHEREAS, Free and fair elections are essential to American
democracy and effective self-governance; and
WHEREAS, Individual persons are rightfully recognized as the 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, They 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 United States
Constitution as adopted, nor have Congress and the states recognized
corporations as legal persons in any subsequent federal constitutional
amendment; and
WHEREAS, During the 1885–1886 United States Supreme Court term, in
the midst of oral arguments leading to the decision Santa Clara vs.
Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394, 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 of
Chief Justice Waite sanctioned private corporations to sue municipal
and state governments for adopting laws that violate a corporation's
rights even when 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 over a century, and most
recently applied it in its decision Citizens United v. the Federal
Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876, that eliminated many restrictions,
including any total prohibition, on corporate spending in the electoral
process; and
WHEREAS, The Court in Citizens 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 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 election;
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 the judicial reversal of democratically enacted laws
passed at the municipal, state, and federal 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 local and regional economies; and
WHEREAS, Large corporations own most of America's mass media and
employ those 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 United States Constitution to define persons as human
beings and not corporations;
NOW, THEREFORE, Your Memorialists respectfully resolve:
That the General Assembly urges Congress to propose an amendment to
the United States Constitution for the states' consideration which
provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United
States or any of its jurisdictional subdivisions.
BE IT RESOLVED, That copies of this Memorial be immediately
transmitted to the Honorable Barack Obama, President of the United
States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the
House of Representatives, the President of the Senate and the Speaker
of the House of Representatives of each state's legislature of the
United States of America, and each member of Congress from the State of
Washington.