{"id":62868,"date":"2015-08-24T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=62868"},"modified":"2015-08-23T15:32:07","modified_gmt":"2015-08-23T14:32:07","slug":"appellate-court-judges-cite-1984-to-expand-corporate-first-amendment-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/08\/appellate-court-judges-cite-1984-to-expand-corporate-first-amendment-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Appellate Court Judges Cite \u201c1984\u201d to Expand Corporate First Amendment Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aug. 20 2015 – <\/em>A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued\u00a0a decision<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday [18 Aug] supporting a deeply cherished belief of many huge corporations: that the First Amendment shields\u00a0them\u00a0from government requirements to provide information\u00a0about their products.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Greg Kahn\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

The case<\/a> involved a provision in the\u00a02010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act ordering corporations to disclose their use of \u201cconflict minerals\u201d from\u00a0the Democratic Republic of the Congo.\u00a0The DRC is rich in\u00a0minerals used in cell phones, laptops and many other gadgets, and demand for them\u00a0has helped fuel what\u2019s been called \u201cAfrica\u2019s World War<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In finding for the National Association of Manufacturers, the D.C. Circuit judges\u00a0declared\u00a0that to be unconstitutional compelled speech.<\/p>\n

There have been some similar previous\u00a0cases. In 2011, tobacco companies sued\u00a0the\u00a0Food and Drug Administration<\/a>\u00a0on First Amendment grounds and stopped it from requiring\u00a0them to put graphic photographs<\/a>\u00a0of the effects of smoking on cigarette packages.<\/p>\n

But when the wonderfully named American Meat Institute sued the\u00a0Department of Agriculture<\/a> to try to roll back regulations\u00a0forcing it\u00a0to\u00a0tell consumers where the animals they\u2019re eating were born, raised and slaughtered, it\u00a0lost.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s most noticeable about the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals conflict minerals decision \u2014\u00a0written by George H.W. Bush appointee\u00a0Raymond Randolph and joined by Reagan appointee David Sentelle \u2014 is that it reads less like a dispassionate legal treatise and more like an extremely long, nicely typeset\u00a0right-wing blog post.<\/p>\n

For instance, Reynolds muses, \u201cIf the government required labels on all internal combustion engines stating that \u2018USE OF THIS PRODUCT CONTRIBUTES TO GLOBAL WARMING\u2019 would that be fact or opinion?\u201d Of course, that would be a fact, but to Reynolds it\u2019s merely \u201cthe opinion of many scientists.\u201d<\/p>\n

But best of all are his\u00a0quotations\u00a0from both\u00a01984<\/em> and\u00a0Darkness at Noon<\/em> \u2014 perhaps the two most famous anti-totalitarian novels\u00a0ever written. The citations\u00a0don\u2019t make much sense wedged into the decision, but the implication is clear: Forcing\u00a0Apple\u00a0to tell you whether there\u2019s\u00a0tantalum from Congo\u00a0<\/em>in your iPad\u00a0is the kind of thing Joseph Stalin would do.<\/p>\n

Obama appointee Sri Srinivasan strongly disagreed, noting that the government justifiably requires public companies to disclose lots of facts they would\u00a0rather keep to themselves. But he was outvoted 2 to 1.<\/p>\n

The ruling is yet more evidence that\u00a0the current extremist ideology of corporate America and its judicial allies\u00a0is not going to moderate itself.<\/p>\n

They have a specific future in mind for us \u2014 one in which the Constitution protects all\u00a0huge corporations\u00a0and no actual humans \u2014 and they\u2019re doing everything they possibly can to make it happen.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Before joining First Look, Jon Schwarz worked for Michael Moore\u2019s Dog Eat Dog Films and was Research Producer for Moore\u2019s <\/em>Capitalism: A Love Story.\u00a0He\u2019s contributed to many publications, including <\/em>The<\/em>\u00a0New Yorker, The<\/em>\u00a0New York Times, The<\/em>\u00a0Atlantic, The<\/em>\u00a0Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones and<\/em> Slate, as well as<\/em> NPR and<\/em> \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d In 2003 he collected on a $1,000 bet that Iraq would have no weapons of mass destruction. <\/em>jon.schwarz@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Telling companies they have to disclose if they are financing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is too big a step toward totalitarianism, the D.C. Circuit rules. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}