Corporation-as-carpool dispute curbed

by Jason Walsh

Alas, a disputed carpool lane infraction didn’t loosen corporate America’s grip on election financing, as San Rafael resident Jonathan Frieman’s creative ticket appeal fell on unsympathetic ears Monday at Marin Traffic Court.

Frieman was contesting his $478 carpool lane violation on the grounds that while driving south through the two-passenger lane in Novato last October, a set of incorporating documents constituted a second person in the vehicle—if the U.S. Supreme Court grants corporations the same free speech rights as citizens, as it seemed to in the 2010 Citizens United ruling, argued Frieman, then he and his corporation papers count as two people in the carpool lane.

According to a press release from Kathleen Russell Consulting, the Mill Valley-based firm handling publicity for Frieman’s quest for justice, state vehicle code 470’s definition of a person includes “natural persons and corporations.”

Frieman has vowed to to appeal the ca se all the way to the Supreme Court “in an effort to expose the impracticality of corporate personhood.”

"Corporations are imaginary entities, and we've let them run wild," says Frieman. "Their original intent 200 years ago at the dawn of our nation was to serve human beings. So I'm wresting back that power by making their personhood serve me."

The concept of corporate personhood has been an ongoing controversy for years—but it hit the mainstream in 2010 following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which held that restricting political expenditures by corporations was a violation of their First Amendment rights to free speech. Implicit in such a ruling, some argue, is that the Constitution grants protections to corporations as if they were people.

Representing Frieman at traffic court was attorney Ford Greene—he, too, says the state vehicle code treats a person and a corporation as equivalent.

" When a corporation is present in one's car, it is sufficient to qualify as a two-person occupancy for commuter lane purposes," says Greene, who’s also a San Anselmo city councilmember. "When the corporate presence in our electoral process is financially dominant, by parity it appears appropriate to recognize such presence in an automobile."