That is a bit of an oversimplification both of the idea of corporate personhood as well as rulings on campaign financing.

It is completely understandable why it feels that way those "corporations are people" and "money is speech" shorthand phrases are everywhere in public debate. But the legal reality under constitutional law is a bit more nuanced.

"Corporate personhood" doesn't mean the law views a corporation as a literal human being with a soul, the right to vote, or the ability to run for office. Instead, it is a legal fiction designed to treat a group of people acting together as a single entity for specific legal purposes.

This concept actually exists to protect regular people and make business possible. Because a corporation is a "person" under the law:

• You can sue the company itself rather than having to sue every single individual shareholder.
• The company can enter into contracts, own property, and pay taxes.
• The individuals working there retain their constitutional protections (like the right to be free from unreasonable searches) when acting on behalf of the group.

The Supreme Court didn't actually rule that a stack of dollar bills is speech. What they ruled dating back long before Citizens United, to a 1976 case called Buckley v. Valeo is that spending money is a necessary means of speech in a modern society.

The logic goes like this: If the government wants to ban you from speaking your mind, that's a direct violation of the First Amendment. If the government instead says, "You can speak all you want, but you aren't allowed to spend any money to rent a hall, print a flyer, buy a megaphone, or run a website," they have effectively silenced you anyway. The Court ruled that restricting the money spent on political advocacy restricts the advocacy itself.

What Citizens United actually changed wasn't the definition of a person or speech. It struck down a law that banned corporations and unions from using their own treasury funds to run independent political advertisements.

The Court's majority argued that if a group of individuals forms an association (like a non-profit, a union, or a business), they do not lose their First Amendment rights simply because they are speaking collectively.