Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce
Encyclopedia
Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652
Case citation
Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...

 (1990), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

 held that the Michigan Campaign Finance Act, which prohibited corporations from using treasury money to support or oppose candidates in elections, did not violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court upheld the restriction on corporate speech based on the notion that "[c]orporate wealth can unfairly influence elections," and the Michigan law still allowed the corporation to make contributions from a segregated fund.

Louis J. Caruso, Lansing, Mich., argued on the side of the appellants (Michigan Chamber of Commerce). Richard D. McLellan
Richard D. McLellan
Richard D. McLellan is a lawyer at McLellan Law Offices PLLC. He argued on the side of the appellee in the United States Supreme Court case Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652...

, Lansing, Mich., for appellee (Austin).

The case recognized a state's compelling interest in combating a "different type of corruption in the political arena: the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas."
The decision was overruled by Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, , was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment prohibits government from censoring political broadcasts in candidate elections when those broadcasts are funded by corporations or unions...

, 558 U.S. 50 (2010).

See also

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