Reply #146: according to Justice Stevens they are protected by the first amendment

[onenote]

and if your assertion is that only persons are protected by the first amendment (and where, by the way, does the first amendment say that), then I guess the answer is yes, they are persons for the purpose of the first amendment.

As Justice Stevens points out in his dissent in CU:
"We have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment" and "...speech does not fall entirely outside the protection of the First Amendment merely because it comes from a corporation.... Of course not, but no one suggests the contrary."

I guess its a good thing Stevens is retiring before some here start calling for his impeachment.

Finally, lets' get something straight:
The Bill of Rights on its face applies to action by the Federal Government. The First Amendment doesn't say squat about persons. It says "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...." For a number of years the courts read the First Amendment narrowly as restricting only action by the Federal government ("Congress") not action by the state government. The case to which you refer was an incorporation doctrine case that found that the first amendment applied to the states through the fourteenth amendment. Now, because the fourteenth amendment refers to persons, that incorporation would only work to protect the first amendment rights of a corporation if they were found to be persons. Now, its conceivable that the court could have found that the first amendment applies to state action but only with respect to natural persons because of the reference to "persons" in the fourteenth amendment, but that wouldn't have changed anything with respect to the broad wording of the First Amendment.

Its a good thing that corporate entities are protected by the first amendment and while you might think the examples I've given are "scare" tactics, the fact is that you haven't explained what if anything restrains the government from imposing on corporations the kinds of loyalty pledges or restraints on free expression that apply to individuals. What is bad about CU is that it finds, incorrectly in light of past precedent, that corporations necessarily have first amendment rights that are coextensive with those of natural persons. That's as wrong as saying that all individuals have the exact same first amendment rights when, in fact, the courts have long imposed distinctions between and among speakers with regard to the scope of their first amendment rights.