Congresswoman Edwards And Judiciary Committee Chairman Conyers Introduce Constitutional Amendment To Fix Flawed Supreme Court Ruling On Campaign Finance

Congresswoman Donna F. Edwards (D-MD) and Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) today introduced an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to address the flawed ruling by the Supreme Court allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections. The amendment will undo the Supreme Court decision and allow Congress and the states to regulate the expenditure of funds by corporations for political speech.

"The ruling reached by the Roberts' Court overturned decades of legal precedent by allowing corporations unfettered spending in our political campaigns," said Congresswoman Edwards. "Another law will not rectify this disastrous decision. A Constitutional Amendment is necessary to undo what this Court has done. Justice Brandeis got it right: "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.' It is time we remove corporate influence from our policies and our politics. We cannot allow corporations to dominate our elections, to do so would be both undemocratic and unfair to ordinary citizens."

"The Supreme Court's idea that corporate political speech is no different than an individual citizen's political speech was not the law when the Constitution was written, was not the law before the Supreme Court's decision two weeks ago, and should not be the law in the future. I look forward to working further with Ms. Edwards and my other colleagues to use every tool at our disposal to make sure that elected representatives are accountable to voters, not corporations," said Chairman Conyers.

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