This proposed constitutional amendment establishes that constitutional rights apply only to natural persons and grants governments the authority to regulate political spending to ensure fair democratic participation.
Pramila Jayapal
Representative
WA-7
This proposed constitutional amendment establishes that constitutional rights belong exclusively to natural persons, not artificial entities like corporations. It further empowers governments to regulate campaign contributions and expenditures to ensure fair political participation, explicitly stating that spending money to influence elections is not protected as free speech. Finally, the amendment includes a specific provision to ensure these changes do not restrict the freedom of the press.
Constitutional Amendment Proposes Ending Corporate Personhood and Capping Campaign Spending
This joint resolution proposes a massive shift in how the Constitution works by declaring that constitutional rights belong only to "natural persons." In plain English, this means corporations, LLCs, and other legal entities would no longer have the same inherent rights as you and your neighbors. Under this proposal, these artificial entities would only have the privileges that federal, state, or local governments decide to give them through specific laws, and they would remain fully subject to government regulation.
Humans Only: Redefining Rights
The core of this amendment is a legal firewall between people and organizations. Currently, legal precedents often treat corporations as "persons" in ways that allow them to claim constitutional protections, such as privacy or certain types of speech. This bill explicitly states that rights are for human beings. For a small business owner, this doesn't mean your LLC disappears, but it does mean the legal entity itself couldn't claim a constitutional right to block a government inspection or refuse to follow a regulation based on personal-style liberties. It turns corporate "rights" into "legislated privileges" that can be adjusted or revoked by lawmakers.
Taking the Price Tag Off Politics
The second major pillar of this bill targets the influence of wealth in elections. It requires governments to set hard limits or even total prohibitions on campaign contributions and expenditures. Crucially, this includes a candidate’s ability to spend their own personal fortune. The bill specifically instructs courts that they can no longer view spending money to influence an election as "protected speech" under the First Amendment. If you’ve ever felt like your single vote is drowned out by a multi-million dollar ad buy from a Super PAC, this provision is aimed directly at that dynamic. It mandates public disclosure of all remaining political money to ensure transparency, with the stated goal of making sure every citizen has equal access to the political process regardless of their bank account balance.
The Press and Potential Hurdles
To prevent these new powers from being used to silence the media, the bill includes a specific "freedom of the press" carve-out, ensuring that journalists and news organizations retain their existing constitutional protections. However, the path forward contains significant questions. Because the bill uses broad terms like "artificial entities," there is a middle ground of uncertainty for non-profits or community groups that are technically corporations. Additionally, by giving the government the power to "prohibit" certain expenditures, it creates a system where the people currently in power are responsible for writing the rules on how money can be used to challenge them—a shift that could lead to complex legal battles over who actually gets to be heard during an election cycle.