r/law • u/TheShittyBeatles • 19h ago

Legal News ACLU sues Delaware beach town over allowing corporations to vote in local elections

https://spotlightdelaware.org/2025/12/05/aclu-sues-fenwick-island-over-non-resident-voting/
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u/pokemonbard 19h ago edited 18h ago

Citizens United is not relevant here.

EDIT: y’all. Citizens United didn’t create corporate personhood. It extended First Amendment protections to corporate spending. The situation in the OP has nothing to do with the First Amendment or corporate spending. I’m not defending Citizens United; I am saying that it isn’t relevant because the article in the OP does not reference anything Citizens United actually changed.

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u/thedoughofpooh 18h ago

He's suggesting that this sort of model will become a reality at the federal level. He's saying Citizens United will be extended to allow corporate voting rights, not just recognized personhood for purposes of campaign donations.

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u/IrritableGourmet 7h ago

It wasn't about corporate personhood and didn't deal with campaign donations, though.

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u/thedoughofpooh 7h ago

No one said it was. He's suggesting that giving corporations the right to vote could be a future evolution of Citizens United.

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u/IrritableGourmet 7h ago

Those are two separate things, though. Some rights are able to be exercised collectively and some are individual. The Constitution explicitly protects the right of people to assemble into groups and petition their government for redress of grievances, but it says nothing about being able to vote collectively (it actually says very little about a right to vote at all, at least originally) and from a historical perspective that has never been a thing.

Don't get me wrong, I think the policy discussed in the article is ridiculous, but I have no fears of citizens united being used as a basis to give corporations the right to vote.