The Hill News

Apparently the campaign finance “reform” lobby can’t take a hint. After repeated U.S. Supreme Court rulings affirming the vital importance of free speech in elections and striking down their efforts to regulate the funding of political speech, they continue to promote legislation designed to silence disfavored speakers. Their latest effort, introduced on July 13, is the so-called “Shareholder Protection Act” (H.R. 2517, S. 1360). But despite its anodyne name, the Shareholder Protection Act has little to do with protecting shareholders and everything to do with silencing corporate speech.

The brainchild of Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the Shareholder Protection Act would require corporations to get approval from a majority of their shareholders every year in which they wish to speak out in a federal election. The Act even requires corporations to get shareholder approval before making contributions to industry tra! de associations that might eventually make political expenditures. Corporations that fail to get separate permission each year they spend money on their own electoral speech or donate to trade associations that might someday engage in electoral speech could be sued by shareholders for damages of three times the amount of their expenditures.

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