I take thee, AT&T, to be my lawfully wedded husband…

via movetoamend.org

One of the most insidious, venomous, and ridiculous movements gaining strength over the past few decades, culminating in the Citizens United decision of 2010 giving corporations the First Amendment Right to Free Speech (from The Bill of Rights), is the push for what is often referred to as “corporate personhood.” 

Most recently, in 2011, however, the United States Supreme court held in FCC v. AT&T Inc. that corporations do not have the same right to privacy that an individual, “natural” person does, a ruling strikingly contrary in some sense to the Citizens United case.  It seems rather paradoxical to refer to individuals as “natural” persons, implying, then, that corporations are quite “unnatural” persons indeed!  In their ruling, the Supreme Court stated the following:

“Personal” ordinarily refers to individuals. People do not generally use terms such as personal characteristics or personal correspondence to describe the characteristics or correspondence of corporations.” 

“We reject the argument that because “person” is defined for purposes of FOIA to include a corporation, the phrase “personal privacy” in Exemption 7(C) reaches corporations as well. The protection in FOIA against disclosure of law enforcement information on the ground that it would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy does not extend to corporations. We trust that AT&T will not take it personally.” 

Move to Amend is an organized effort in the United States to end the “controversy,” removing the corporate grip on political and judicial power.

I am particularly amuzed by one of the Move to Amend’s efforts to illustrate the nonsense of corporate personhood, its staging of Corporate-Human Weddings. This is, to me, a wonderful guerilla tactic, illustrating the ridiculous nature of the argument that corporations should be recognized as legal persons.

The Wedding Party should be celebrated with blue chips and Blackwater cocktails!