The Court has recognized that First Amendment protection extends to corporations.(citing Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Willingboro , 431 U. S. 85 (1977) ; Time, Inc. v. Firestone... [then follows a laundry list of cases]
This protection has been extended by explicit holdings to the context of political speech. See, e.g., Button , 371 U. S., at 428–429; Grosjean v. American Press Co. , 297 U. S. 233, 244 (1936) . Under the rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection “simply because its source is a corporation.”...
(“The identity of the speaker is not decisive in determining whether speech is protected. Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the ‘discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas’ that the First Amendment seeks to foster” (quoting Bellotti, 435 U. S., at 783)). The Court has thus rejected the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not “natural persons.” Id., at 776; see id. , at 780, n. 16. Cf. id. , at 828 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting)...
The dissent concluded that deeming a particular group “too powerful” was not a “justificatio[n] for withholding First Amendment rights from any group—labor or corporate.” Id. , at 597. The Court did not get another opportunity to consider the constitutional question in that case; for after a remand, a jury found the defendants not guilty...
There is simply no support for the view that the First Amendment , as originally understood, would permit the suppression of political speech by media corporations. The Framers may not have anticipated modern business and media corporations. See McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n , 514 U. S. 334, 360–361 (1995) ( Thomas , J., concurring in judgment). Yet television networks and major newspapers owned by media corporations have become the most important means of mass communication in modern times. The First Amendment was certainly not understood to condone the suppression of political speech in society’s most salient media. It was understood as a response to the repression of speech and the press that had existed in England and the heavy taxes on the press that were imposed in the colonies. See McConnell , 540 U. S., at 252–253 (opinion of Scalia , J.); Grosjean , 297 U. S., at 245–248; Near , 283 U. S., at 713–714. The great debates between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists over our founding document were published and expressed in the most important means of mass communication of that era—newspapers owned by individuals. See McIntyre , 514 U. S., at 341–343; id. , at 367 ( Thomas , J., concurring in judgment). At the founding, speech was open, comprehensive, and vital to society’s definition of itself; there were no limits on the sources of speech and knowledge. See B. Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 5 (1967) (“Any number of people could join in such proliferating polemics, and rebuttals could come from all sides”); G. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787, p. 6 (1969) (“t is not surprising that the intellectual sources of [the Americans’] Revolutionary thought were profuse and various”). The Framers may have been unaware of certain types of speakers or forms of communication, but that does not mean that those speakers and media are entitled to less First Amendment protection than those types of speakers and media that provided the means of communicating political ideas when the Bill of Rights was adopted.