Is a corporation a person?

Scriveners Error had a Frankenstein moment with the recent Thinket Ink case, which let a corporation sue for racial discrimination.

No, a corporation is not a person. It’s a piece of paper sitting in a secretary of state’s office. Pieces of paper can't be discriminated against, vote, or have political ideas.

But corporations are people – the owners and others the corporation represents in litigation. These people have speech rights, rights not to be discriminated against, and so forth. I’ve written on this, although the articles are available only on Westlaw/Lexis or in hard copy from me:

The Constitutional Conception of the Corporation, 4 Supreme Court Economic Review 95 (1995); Corporate Political Speech, 49 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 109 (1992) and in my book with Henry Butler, The Constitution and the Corporation (1995) (linked in the sidebar).

So the African-American owners of this SBA-certified minority-owned contractor shouldn't lose their civil rights because they chose to do business in the corporate form. They might be required to sue as a corporation, as in this case, because that’s a convenient way to handle litigation, but that doesn’t determine their individual rights.

But courts also should recognize that, by the same principle, people shouldn't lose their speech rights just because they exercise these rights though the corporation in which they have invested. With the mooting of the Nike case, we’ll have to wait until another day to see that resolved.

Comments

[James Rodgers]

If a corporation is a person, why didn't G.E.'s three felony convictions result in the corporation's incarceration for life?