For Whom the First Amendment Matters

[Commentary] Free speech matters to the hundreds of millions of Internet users who exercise this right every time they connect with others online. But if you ask some of the lawyers working for the companies that sell you Internet access, they’ll insist that it’s more important to protect the free speech rights of phone and cable giants like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. In a convoluted twist, they argue that the First Amendment gives these same companies the right to block, throttle and degrade the communications of everyone using their services. Did you get that? The First Amendment gives Comcast the right to censor you.

We owe this Orwellian shift in thinking to a growing number of court decisions, among them Citizens United, that define corporations as people and their business practices as speech. Harvard Law School’s John C. Coates documents this change in a study released last February, noting that “corporations have begun to displace individuals as the direct beneficiaries of the First Amendment.” It’s a trend Coates describes as “bad law and bad politics” and “increasingly bad for business and society.” As the court case against the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules rages in the courts, the First Amendment should not be used to take communication rights away from the very people it was designed to protect.

[Tim Karr is senior director of strategy for Free Press]