Many thanks for the Davis City Council’s unanimous resolution to support Assembly Joint Resolution 22. It is something to be proud of when your city takes a stand for something so right.

AJR 22, proposed in January by Assembly members Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, and Michael Allen, D-Santa Rosa, would overturn the 2010 Supreme Court decision on Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission. This was a momentous decision that allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in our elections. In the two years since this decision, we have seen a grotesque growth in campaign spending and an ever coarsening of political campaigns.

How right is the council’s decision? U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer were quoted in the Washington Post of Feb. 18 as calling for the court to revisit its Citizens United decision. These justices said that experience since this decision do not bear out the majority opinion that corporate expenditures “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

Following on this theme, a New York Times editorial on Feb. 22 calls on the court to reconsider its “disastrous Citizens United decision.” The court has an opportunity to revisit the 2010 decision in a Montana state case before the court that pits corporations wanting unlimited spending limits vs. the Montana Supreme Court that upholds corporate campaign spending limits.

Justice Ginsburg is further quoted: Reviewing the Montana case “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 editorial concludes, “A factual record would show that unlimited independent expenditures can have a corrupting effect, without qualifying as quid-pro-quo bribery. It’s hard to see how the court’s conservative majority could contend these expenditures pose no threat to American democracy.”

Clearly, Citizens United was a wrong decision and must be overturned if we are to keep our democracy. So thank you, City Council, for that very right decision.

Mary M. Zhu

Davis

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