THE SUPREME COURT precedent that John Bonifaz is up against is a Massachusetts case: First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision overturning a state law prohibiting corporations from campaigning against a ballot measure. According to a 1989 analysis by the Journal of Advertising, the decision " affected similar laws in thirty other states, thus facilitating corporate speech on public policy issues and establishing a legal principle of the corporation’s right to free speech. "

In a ringing affirmation of the First Amendment, the majority decision, written by Justice Lewis Powell, said, in part: " If the speakers here were not corporations, no one would suggest that the State could silence their proposed speech. It is the type of speech indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual. The inherent worth of the speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union or individual. "

Yet according to Bonifaz and anti-corporate activists, First National Bank v. Bellotti was just one in a long line of wrongful steps taken by the courts dating back to the late 1800s, when the Supreme Court — perhaps through a clerical fluke — granted corporations the status of " personhood. " At the forefront of these decisions is the 1976 case Buckley v. Valeo, which held that mandatory campaign-spending limits were an unconstitutional abridgement of the First Amendment. The Buckley case, in particular, has long been an enormous obstacle to campaign-finance reform.

In the matter of Nike v. Kasky, the amicus brief that Bonifaz helped prepare was at the behest of a Boulder, Colorado–based group called ReclaimDemocracy.org, whose self-described mission is " restoring democratic authority over corporations. " The organization’s director, Jeff Milchen, has written, " So long as we accept such absurdities as ‘corporate free speech,’ we preclude the possibility of democracy, for we can never speak as loudly with our own voices as corporations can with the unlimited amplification of money. "

Another anti-corporate activist who’s been following the Nike case is Richard Grossman, a New Hampshire resident who is the co-founder of the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy, in South Yarmouth, Massachusetts. In an interview, Grossman said the case is " fundamentally about the ability of corporate managers to use the law of the land against the American people. " He asked: " Where is it written in the Constitution and the First Amendment that property and capital have First Amendment rights? "

The amicus brief was largely written by Lisa Danetz, a staff attorney for Bonifaz’s organization. She is careful to elide some of the trickier issues. For instance, the brief states that a corporation should not be protected if it makes " false factual statements ... about its own operations. " (The emphasis is in the original brief.) That, presumably, would be an easier standard to comply with than something more sweeping. She also said in an interview that her argument would not apply to corporate-owned news organizations or to nonprofit groups such as hers, because in those cases public discourse is central to their missions, rather than just another way of selling shoes; and she points to Supreme Court precedents backing her up.

Besides, she says, if Nike founder Phil Knight wants to defend his company, he can do so as an individual with full First Amendment protection — but without the benefit of the special privileges that government confers on corporations, such as limited liability and economic incentives. " The idea here in our brief is that the speaker matters, " Danetz says. " I mean, Phil Knight as an individual doesn’t have any advantages in conveying his ideas that have been granted by the state. "

It’s a seductive argument. And yet the notion that government should restrict anyone’s (or anything’s) First Amendment rights in return for having conferred some sort of advantage is pernicious. Already, religious organizations risk their nonprofit status if they endorse political candidates — a measure rammed through Congress in the 1950s by Senator Lyndon Johnson to punish his political enemies back in Texas. If corporations can lose their First Amendment rights, wonders Eugene Volokh, why couldn’t the government prohibit homeowners from expressing views that are anti-war — or racist — as the price for keeping the federal tax subsidies on their mortgages?

ACLU staff attorney Ann Brick, who helped prepare that organization’s own amicus brief in the Nike case, puts it this way: " Whether or not artificial entities on their own have a right to speak is beside the point. The real issue is whether we the audience have a right to get information from as many different sources as possible on matters of public concern. The bottom line is, if a whole class of speakers are prohibited from speaking, we the general public are the losers. "

Ultimately, the measures advocated by anti-corporate activists call to mind the title of a book by civil libertarian and journalist Nat Hentoff: Free Speech for Me — but Not for Thee (HarperCollins, 1992).

The power imbalance between huge, wealthy corporations and individual activists is real and growing. There is no perfect solution. But the ACLU’s imperfect solution — countering harmful speech with more speech — would appear to be about as good as we can hope for in a democratic society.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com

Read his daily Media Log at BostonPhoenix.com