A Corporation is a Person, but Only When the Left Says So

Along with most liberals, New York State Attorney General A. G. Schneiderman is upset over the United States Supreme Court's decision in Burwell V. Hobby Lobby. In a Op-Ed posted July 17th, 2014, in the Huffington Post, he wrote,

The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision was both factually and legally flawed. It accepted false assertions about the science of how contraception works, and it expanded the absurd legal principle that corporations are people by essentially finding that corporations can hold religious beliefs. (1)

First of all, the science of contraception works in favor of the decision, in that only those four contraceptives that allow insemination and then deny continued life were impacted.

Secondly, were it not for what he calls the absurd legal principle that corporations are people they could not be sued as people, a practice fondly accepted and practiced by the left.

Shelly Morgan, Demand Media, notes

Corporations can sue and be sued under the law, just like people. The legal fiction that corporations are people allows the corporation to assert some basic 14th Amendment rights in court, including the right to due process and the right to equal protection. Whole bodies of law, such as environmental regulations, can be applied to corporations precisely because these business entities are treated like people in courts of law.(2)

Schneiderman's missive is more political homily than anything else. It reads like a manifesto on his feelings on gender related issues.

Like Attorney Generals before him, Schneiderman wields the Op-Ed/ Press Release like a flag, calling attention to himself as he seeks to gain favor with the masses. And, like so many liberals before him, he ignores the benefits of corporate personhood when it benefits him, and embraces it when it suits his pet causes.


(1) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-t-schneiderman/fighting-back-against-hob_b_5597240.html

(2) http://smallbusiness.chron.com/corporation-considered-artificial-person-under-law-57912.html