Supreme Court Won't Hear Appeal Over Corporate Campaign Contributions

[onenote]

21. I just explained that regulation of speech is and always has been permissible if justified by a

substantial enough governmental interest.

The court has upheld the government's right to tax newspapers. But not all taxes levied against a newspaper are necessarily constitutional. I direct your attention to the 1936 Grosjean case, where the SCOTUS (after reaffirming that corporations were "persons' for purposes of the first amendment, struck down a particular form of taxation levied by the state against certain newspapers, stating
"It is not intended in this case to suggest that the owners of newspapers are immune from any of the ordinary forms of taxation for support of Government. The tax in question is not an ordinary form of tax, but one single in kind, with a long history of hostile misuse against the freedom of the press. The manner of its use in this case is, in itself, suspicious; it is not measured or limited by the volume of advertisements, but by the extent of the circulation of the publication in which the advertisements are carried, with the plain purpose of penalizing the publishers and curtailing the circulation of a selected group of newspapers."

More than forty years later, the court again highlighted how the first amendment protected newspapers not from all forms of taxation,but rather from certain forms of taxation. In the Minnesota Star Tribune case the court ruled, in essence, that the state's interest in raising revenue, standing alone, did not justify the particular tax at issue (which applied only to certain newspapers) since a generally applicable tax on businesses (including newspapers) was an alternative that would not have the same first amendment implications.

Now, I'm curious to hear your answer to the question I posed as to whether you think the constitution protects the right of a corporate entity, such as DU, to solicit and receive (and for individuals to make) "money" contributions in support of its website.