Shareholders of Home Depot will likely have more influence in the company’s political expenditures, reports Ciara Torres-Spelliscy for the Brennan Center for Justice.
Torres-Spelliscy notes a recent no-action letter from the SEC that she says “will enhance the ability of shareholders to have more of a voice when publicly-traded corporations spend money on politics.”
The SEC letter was prompted after Home Depot “tried to keep a shareholder resolution on corporate political spending off of this year’s proxy statement,” Torres-Spelliscy wrote. “The SEC said the shareholders would get a chance to vote on the matter. This action provides shareholders with greater protections when corporations spend their money, in the form of general corporate funds, on politics.”
The SEC’s action according to Torres-Spelliscy means that the shareholders have the opportunity on “company-by-company basis” to take action the planned political spending. “This is a big step,” she writes, “in the right direction for giving shareholders more protections after Citizens United allowed corporations the ability to spend other people’s money in politics.”
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