"While I recognize that this doctrine is firmly entrenched in law," Nelson began, "I find the concept entirely offensive. Corporations are artificial creatures of law. As such, they should enjoy only those powers—not constitutional rights, but legislatively-conferred powers—that are concomitant with their legitimate function, that being limited liability investment vehicles for business. Corporations are not persons. Human beings are persons, and it is an affront to the inviolable dignity of our species that courts have created a legal fiction which forces people—human beings—to share fundamental natural rights with soulless creations of government. Worse still, while corporations and human beings share many of the same rights under the law, they clearly are not bound equally to the same codes of good conduct, decency, and morality, and they are not held equally accountable for their sins. Indeed, it is truly ironic that the death penalty and hell are reserved only to natural persons."

"The question then, is when in the last 99 years did Montana lose the power or interest sufficient to support the statute, if it ever did," the majority said. "We think not. Issues of corporate influence, sparse population, dependence upon agriculture and extractive resource development, location as a transportation corridor, and low campaign costs make Montana especially vulnerable to continued efforts of corporate control to the detriment of democracy and the republican form of government."

Under the Supreme Court: High court agrees to consider corporate free speech post-Citizen United

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider taking another bite of the corporate political free speech apple recently, accepting a petition asking justices to summarily overturn a Montana Supreme Court decision petitioners say flies in the face of Citizens United.

In upholding a ban on corporate independent expenditures in state elections, the Montana justices determined that "unlike Citizens United, this case concerns Montana law, Montana elections and it arises from Montana history."

That ruling, the petition said, raises the question for the U.S. Supreme Court to consider: "Whether Montana is bound by the holding of Citizens United, that a ban on corporate independent political expenditures is a violation of the First Amendment, when the ban applies to state, rather than federal, elections." ...

In March, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer argued the Montana case would give the Supreme Court a chance to rethink Citizens United.

"A petition for certiorari will give the Court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates' allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway," the statement said.