Первое национальное банк Бостона против Беллотти: о праве корпораций на свободу слова

First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765 (1978), is a U. S. constitutional law case which defined the free speech right of corporations for the first time. The United States Supreme Court held that corporations have a First Amendment right to make contributions to ballot initiative campaigns. The ruling came in response to a Massachusetts law that prohibited corporate donations in ballot initiatives unless the corporation's interests were directly involved. In 1976 several corporations, including the First National Bank of Boston, were barred from contributing to a Massachusetts referendum regarding tax policy and subsequently sued. The case was successfully appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in November 1977. On April 26, 1978, the Court ruled 5–4 against the Massachusetts law. As a result of the ruling, states could no longer impose specific regulations on donations from corporations in ballot initiative campaigns. While the Bellotti decision did not directly affect federal law, it has been cited by other Supreme Court cases such as McConnell v. FEC and Citizens United v. FEC.

Since the early 1900s, federal law has prohibited the use of corporate funds to influence federal elections. In 1907, Congress passed the Tillman Act, prohibiting corporations and national banks from contributing to federal campaigns. Forty years later, the Taft Hartley Act banned direct election contributions by labor unions and corporations to federal elections. In 1971, the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) initiated sweeping reforms by requiring full reporting of contributions to federal elections. In 1974, amendments to the FECA created the Federal Election Commission and enacted stricter limits on election contributions and expenditures. The Court, introducing the concept of spending money as a form of unrestricted political speech, overturned limits on campaign expenditures. However, it upheld contribution limits because such limits served the government's interest in reducing election corruption. which expanded the 1974 FECA amendment's prohibitions. The Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, applying Massachusetts General Laws. ch. 55 § 8, disagreed.

The U. S. Supreme Court heard First National Bank of Boston et al. v. Bellotti, Attorney General of Massachusetts, on November 9, 1977. E. Susan Garsh joined him on the briefs. The Federal Election Commission filed briefs of amici curiae supporting an affirmation of the constitutionality of the statue. The Northeastern Legal Foundation's motion to file a brief was denied.

The Supreme Court issued its decision on April 26, 1978, with a 5 to 4 majority vote in favor of the First National Bank of Boston. Justice Powell delivered the majority opinion and was joined by Justices Stewart, Blackmun, and Stevens, with Burger writing a separate concurring opinion. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations have First Amendment speech protections extending beyond material commercial interests, reversing the decision made by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce that even though the First Amendment did protect corporate expression, restrictions on independent expenditure were justified due to the compelling interest to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption in campaigns. The Austin majority quoted Bellotti in agreeing that political speech did not lose First Amendment protection "merely because the speaker is a corporation." However, the Austin majority held that the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a non profit corporation that wanted to publish a newspaper advertisement supporting a candidate, did not qualify for the non profit exemption established in Federal Election Commission v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc (1986). The dissent in the Austin case cited the statement in Bellotti that "the legislature is constitutionally disqualified from dictating the subjects about which persons may speak and the speakers who may address a public issue." The dissent found that Massachusetts's law discriminated on the basis of the speaker's identity, and argued that the precedents of the Supreme Court, such as Bellotti, condemn this type of censorship. Scholars agree that the Austin decision was inconsistent with precedent in that the Court had previously never upheld a statue that regulated corporate independent expenditure because of a state interest in preventing corruption.

In 2002, the Supreme Court in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission upheld the two major provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which were the bans on unrestricted "soft money" donations to political parties and on electioneering communications, which are defined as any broadcast that refers to a federal candidate and is aired within a designated time frame of that candidate's election. The McConnell majority moved away from the Bellotti decision by allowing such restrictions on corporate donations. The majority accepted legislative judgment that corporate treasuries represent a threat of corruption when deployed directly in candidate elections." The McConnell dissent characterized the Austin argument concerning the "corrosive and distorting effects" of corporations as the notion that corporations "will be able to convince voters on the correctness of their ideas." The dissent argued that using this reasoning, simply "winning the marketplace of ideas" could be considered evidence of corruption.

In 2010, the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission overturned Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990), portions of McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003), and Section 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (2002) that prohibited electioneering communications by corporations. The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy described the reasoning of the Citizens majority as based on two propositions. The Court "returned to the principle established in Buckley and Bellotti that the Government may not suppress political speech based on the speaker's corporate identity." The Court ruled that independent expenditure limits were unconstitutional because, unlike campaign contribution limits, they fail to "serve any substantial government interest in stemming the reality or appearance of corruption in the electoral process." The Court argued, "Austin upheld a corporate independent expenditure restriction" by recognizing a "new governmental interest" in preventing corruption to "bypass Buckley and Bellotti." In overruling Austin, the Citizens majority insisted, "before Austin, the court had not allowed the exclusion of a class of speakers from general public dialogue." The Court did concede that the Bellotti case "did not address the constitutionality" of bans on "corporate independent expenditures to support candidates." The Bellotti decision focused on state referendums, not the election of candidates. However, not all of these state laws were annulled by the Supreme Court ruling. Universal caps on donations for ballot initiatives as well as specific bans aimed to prevent "undue" corporate influence on referendums were still considered constitutional. Of these 31 states, 18 of them, including Massachusetts, had laws that would be considered unconstitutional after the Bellotti decision. In the aftermath of Bellotti, several states changed their laws relating to spending on referendums. In 1981, Iowa's state legislature updated their campaign finance laws to state,

It is unlawful for any insurance company, savings and loan association, bank, and or corporation to contribute any money, property, labor, or thing of value, directly or indirectly, to any committee, or for the purpose of influencing the vote of any elector, except that such resources may be so expended in connection with a ballot issue, however all such expenditures are subject to the disclosure requirements of this chapter. Montana had previously banned all corporate donations for or against ballot issues. In October 1978, this law was overturned by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit citing First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti. On December 23, 1986, the General Court of Massachusetts approved a series of changes to its campaign finance laws, and only then officially changed the law governing corporate spending on ballot initiatives. In "An Act Further Regulating Political Campaign Financing," the General Court stated that they were "striking out" Chapter 55, Section 8, the law annulled by the Bellotti decision. Some scholars maintain that this advantage gives corporations undue influence over referendum campaigns and policy outcomes. One such way corporations can use money to sway voters is through advertising and spreading information about propositions. For example, a California ballot initiative, Proposition 37 from 2012, attracted a disproportionately high level of spending from corporations. The proposition was defeated by a margin of 51% to 48%, a result that left many pro Prop 37 groups blaming unfair financing as the reason for the defeat. Still, other political scientists disagree, believing that there is no definitive evidence that links corporation donations to referendum results. For example, the campaign around California's Proposition 188, a ballot initiative aimed at lifting bans on smoking, is another example of unequal spending between corporations and others. Nevertheless, in this case, voters ultimately voted against Proposition 188. Most of the discourse pertaining to the case relates to the decision's effects on the role of money in politics and corporate rights.

Those who support the Bellotti decision saw it as a culmination of constitutional thinking on the issue of corporate political speech. These scholars and lawyers praise the ruling for treating corporate speech as equal as individual speech and thus increasing the information provided to voters during elections. According supporters, there is a long history of legislative and judicial decisions that justifies the Bellotti decision. Lawyer Francis H. Fox wrote, "[the ruling] perceives that the First Amendment's purposes are better served by allowing the [free] use of means of communication than by enacting legislation designed to foster equality of access to those means."

Critics condemned Bellotti for increasing the influx of corporate money into elections, claiming that this would drown out smaller voices and candidates. Academic George W. Scofield said that corporate speech unrelated to corporate property "becomes the purely personal views of corporate management [and is] undeserving of the constitutional protection afforded by Bellotti." Former Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit J. Skelly Wright said that the rulings in both the First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti and Buckley v. Valeo cases have "given protection to the polluting effect of money in financial campaigns." Wright advocates for "one person, one vote," a concept that meshes with Scofield's concept of aligning the speech of a corporation and of the individuals composing it. Some critics point out that commercial interests and public interests are not always aligned, and that investment from corporations for commercial interests can be detrimental to the formation of public opinion. In an article in The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse said, "the court's speech protective instincts appear increasingly to serve a deregulatory agenda." Schneider writes that the Court misinterpreted the First Amendment and had "problems in understanding social reality."