D.C. Circuit, Quote of the Day

Corporations Are People, Now They Can Lie

A recent D.C. Circuit decision gives corporations more rights.

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To support the conflict minerals disclosure rule, the dissent argues that the rule is valid because the United States is thick with laws forcing “[i]ssuers of securities” to “make all sorts of disclosures about their products.” Charles Dickens had a few words about this form of argumentation: “‘Whatever is is right’; an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.”

— Judge A. Raymond Randolph, writing for the majority in National Association of Manufacturers v. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, holding that publicly traded corporations have a First Amendment right to not disclose if their products contain conflict minerals from war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, striking down a provision in Dodd-Frank requiring such disclosure. Commentators worry this opens the door to First Amendment challenges by corporations over a wide range of transparency and sunshine laws.

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