Now Corporations Claim The "Right To Lie"

While Nike was conducting a huge and expensive PR blitz to tell people that it had cleaned up its subcontractors' sweatshop labor practices, an alert consumer advocate and activist in California named Marc Kasky caught them in what he alleges are a number of specific deceptions. Citing a California law that forbids corporations from intentionally deceiving people in their commercial statements, Kasky sued the multi-billion-dollar corporation.

Instead of refuting Kasky's charge by proving in court that they didn't lie, however, Nike instead chose to argue that corporations should enjoy the same "free speech" right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives. If people have the constitutionally protected right to say, "The check is in the mail," or, "That looks great on you," then, Nike's reasoning goes, a corporation should have the same right to say whatever they want in their corporate PR campaigns.
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PepsiCo Kids
Caffeine and the First Amendment

Apparently, defending children from the perils of caffeine "upsets the applecart." My principal informed me that "down town" a reference to the superintendent's office was vexed by my overt and public criticism of our school district's unholy alliance with PepsiCo. I was instructed not to state that I was an employee of the Salem/Keizer school district when I wrote editorials critical of our soda "contract" with PepsiCo. Emails about the pitfalls of the soda contract were not to be shared with fellow teachers during school hours.
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