Citizens United and the defenestration of Brendan Eich

So here we have at least three corporations ganging up on an individual and depriving him of his livelihood solely on account of his personal political views. For the past few years, since the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, we’ve been hearing incessantly from liberals and Democrats outraged at the notion that corporations have the right to free speech.

This would seem an excellent opportunity for a principled and imaginative leftist to advance that argument in a way that might appeal across ideological lines. OkCupid’s boycott call–“We would . . . prefer that our users not use Mozilla software,” the site informed users who did–was straight-up corporate speech. So was Credo Mobile’s organizing of a petition against Eich (though no one would deny that the individuals who signed it were engaged in an act of personal expression).

And while Mozilla’s refusal to support its CEO was in part a matter of business exigencies, in her blog post Baker frames it in terms of the corporation’s values and opinions: “Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality.”