Effort Afoot in Vermont to Abolish Corporate Personhood

One year after the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that corporations have the same rights as people, movements are underway around the U.S. to reverse the new protections granted by the country's highest court. Vermont State Senator Virginia Lyons has introduced the country's first anti-corporate personhood resolution which proposes amending the U.S. Constitution to specify that "corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States." The resolution would make it clear that corporations are not the equivalent of human beings and do not have the same constitutional rights afforded people.

The measure says, "corporations have used their so-called rights to successfully seek the judicial reversal of democratically elected laws." It notes that "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 consumer rather than sovereign citizens with democratic rights and responsibilities." The resolution has a good chance of passing in Vermont's legislature, which has a reputation of standing up to corporate power and passing legislation to protect human beings from corporate abuses.