Folks: I'm trying to make an argument using religious contributions as an analogy, and wanted to make sure I'm not missing something in the thing I'm analogizing to.
I wanted to say something about the "protecting shareholders" rationale for limiting corporate campaign-related speech, and consider an analogy to corporate contributions to religious organizations (whether those contributions would go entirely to religious uses, or would also partly promote the charitable function of the organization). As I understand the "protecting shareholders" argument, it goes something like this: Many people don't want to have their money used to support or oppose candidates or ballot measures, even when the use is indirect (i.e., when they have rights under a retirement fund, the retirement fund buys stock in a corporation, and then the corporation spends the money, based on its managers' judgment that spending the money would be good for business). Moreover, it's not so easy for people to avoid this, since many people can't meaningfully control where their retirement money is being invested. Therefore, there's a sufficiently compelling interest in preventing this imposition on such involuntary shareholders by banning corporations from spending money to support or oppose candidates or ballot measures. My questions: (1) Has anyone similarly argued that states should bar corporate donations to religious organizations, on the theory that this "protects shareholders" from having their money used to support religious beliefs they disagree with? (2) Would such a prohibition be constitutionally permissible, or would it violate the Lukumi Babalu / McDaniel no-discrimination-against-religion principle? My inclination is to say that it wouldn't be proper, and would likely even be unconstitutional, to bar such corporate donations, and that "protecting shareholders" isn't a sufficient reason for such a bar - and it likewise wouldn't be as to a bar on corporate expenditures on campaign-related speech. But I wanted to make sure that I hadn't missed some arguments, or some situations in which some such bar has indeed been imposed. I'm not talking here about the perennial question of whether public money can be given to various religious organizations; I'm speaking of hypothetical laws that would bar corporate funds from being given to such organizations. (Note also that I'm not talking about evenhanded application of the business judgment rule to foreclose contributions that can't reasonably be seen as furthering the corporate interest; assume the prohibition also extends to contributions that do further the corporate interest, for instance because they build goodwill.) Thanks in advance for any feedback people might have, Eugene
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