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by ggg9990 2880 days ago
Nothing in the constitution says that a jurisdiction can’t ban free food.
2 comments

You can’t tell corporations how to spend their money either, as money is a form of speech. Isn’t that the gist of the Citizens United decision?
No, it's not.

CU (and before it Buckley v. Valeo) stands (in relevant part) for the idea that the right to spend money on Constitutionally protected expression is itself part of the scope of the right protected. It's not “money is speech” but “the freedom to spend money on speech is part of the freedom of speech”; the former makes a better soundbite and can be a useful memory aid, but loses critical information if taken as the core message.

No, of course not. Citizens United says you can’t limit a corporations ability to create and distribute a political movie by pretending to regulate money not speech.

It has no bearing on what sorts of non-speech activities you can regulate, even though they happen to involve money.

You can definitely tell a corporation how to spend their money, just not as a way to limit protected speech. That's pretty much all zoning laws are after all restrictions on how people and corporations can spend their money.
You can't tell corporations how to spend their money vis-a-vis political campaigning. It's a much narrower scope than what you're implying.
The food isn't really free but part of the compensation package.

Next thing you know they're going to ban the office supply cabinet and if you need pens or paperclips you need to take a trip to the local Staples.