freedom-of-speech
Do Corporations enjoy the &quot;Freedom of Speech&quot; right?
<p>Citizens are generally protected from being prosecuted by the Federal government over disagreeing with policy.</p>
<p>Although the State of Florida (not the Federal Government) has <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/06/politics/ron-desantis-florida-disney-republicans/?iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial" rel="noreferrer">imposed seemingly punitive measures against Disney:</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign lawyer, called the new Florida
law &quot;vengeful&quot; and pointed to statements from DeSantis and other
Florida Republicans that she said made clear they had illegally
retaliated against Disney's &quot;constitutionally protected speech.&quot;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Do Corporations enjoy speech protection?</p>

<p>Yes.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Court has recognized that First Amendment protection extends to corporations. ... This protection has been extended by explicit holdings to the context of political speech. ... Under the rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection “simply because its source is a corporation.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://casetext.com/case/citizens-united-v-federal-election-comn" rel="noreferrer"><em>Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm'n</em>, 558 U.S. 310, 342 (2010)</a>.</p>

<p>Courts have long treated corporations as being, in legal parlance, &quot;legal persons&quot;, which means that they can be parties to legal actions (both sue and be sued) and assert constitutional rights. This goes back at least to <em>Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company</em>, decided in 1886, which said</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was reaffirmed in <em>Citizens United v FEC</em>, which found that prohibiting criticism of politicians is unconstitutional, even if it's a corporation doing the criticizing. So taking your question &quot;Do Corporations enjoy speech protection?&quot; as literally meaning &quot;Are there free speech rights that corporations can assert?&quot;, the answer is a resounding &quot;Yes&quot;.</p>
<p>However, the rest of your question seems to be asking about the extent of free speech protections, rather than their mere existence. <em>Citizens United</em> has somewhat dishonestly been characterized as &quot;The Supreme Court has said that corporations are people&quot;, but the courts do distinguish between corporations and &quot;actual&quot; human beings, or, as they are referred to in legal parlance, &quot;natural persons&quot;. For instance, natural persons have a dollar limit as to how much money they can directly give to a candidate, while corporations are completely barred from direct contributions.</p>
<p>Furthermore, it's not entirely clear what the limits regarding retributive state action are even in the case of a natural person. Suppose a natural person had a contract with the government, and the government decided to terminate the contract after the person criticized the government. Would that be constitutional? There would be a range of fact-based arguments to be made to that question. Certainly, simply because someone has criticized the government does not mean that the government is now prohibited from taking any action that would be against their interests. But on the other hand, there is a point at which government favoritism based on preferred speech rises to unconstitutionality. If the termination of Disney's special status had been truly unrelated to Disney's speech, Disney would have difficulty making a case for it being a violation of the First Amendment, but it would be difficult to argue that the two things are simply coincidental, even without the repeated Republican statements explicitly tying their actions to Disney's actions.</p>
