California seeks constitutional convention over Citizens United A constitutional convention sought

California State Assemblymember Henry Perea, left, greets Assemblymember Mike Gatto, right, during a legislative session in Assembly chambers at the State Capitol in Sacramento, California, April 29, 2013. California State Assemblymember Henry Perea, left, greets Assemblymember Mike Gatto, right, during a legislative session in Assembly chambers at the State Capitol in Sacramento, California, April 29, 2013. Photo: Max Whittaker/Prime, CIR Photo: Max Whittaker/Prime, CIR Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close California seeks constitutional convention over Citizens United 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

There hasn't been a U.S. constitutional convention in 225 years, and it would take a daunting number of states, 34, to call another one.

That didn't deter Democratic legislators this week from making California the second state, after Vermont, to demand a nationwide gathering of delegates for a single purpose: to propose an amendment repealing the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision that allowed unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns.

On a party-line vote of 23-11, with little debate, the state Senate on Monday approved AJR1, asking Congress to call a constitutional convention that would draft an amendment allowing limits on corporate campaign financing. The amendment would declare, among other things, that money is not speech and that corporations do not have the same scope of political rights as human beings.

"I doubt our founding fathers had the free-speech rights of multinational and foreign corporations in mind when they drafted the First Amendment," said Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles, author of the resolution.

The Assembly had previously approved the measure, which now will be submitted to Congress. It does not need Gov. Jerry Brown's approval because AJR1 is a resolution rather than a proposed law.

In the January 2010 Citizens United case, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that restricting independent political spending by corporations or labor unions violates freedom of speech. The ruling did not affect the limits Congress and legislatures have put on contributions to candidates, but the same conservative majority ruled this year that aggregate limits on an individual's donations to federal candidates were also unconstitutional.

A number of state legislatures, including California's in 2012, have passed symbolic measures urging Congress to approve and submit to the states a constitutional amendment overruling Citizens United. But only California and Vermont have approved resolutions invoking a constitutional procedure that requires a convention when two-thirds of the states - 34 - formally request one.

An amendment becomes part of the Constitution when ratified by legislatures in three-fourths of the states, or 38.

Other constitutional amendments have been proposed at the state level in the past, including a still-pending proposal to require a balanced federal budget, and have never reached the threshold required for a convention. The partisan divide over campaign finance would appear to make any such amendment a long shot at best, but Gatto said it's far from hopeless.

"In every state there are people upset about money in politics," including some Republicans, he said.

At times in the past, Gatto said, when a growing number of states passed resolutions calling for constitutional changes - most recently, the repeal of Prohibition - Congress responded by approving an amendment and submitting it to the states.

Some commentators have said a constitutional convention would give rise to amendments on subjects ranging from abortion to guns. But Gatto said he was confident that the tightly drafted resolutions would limit a convention's scope to campaign finance and that any deviations would be weeded out in the arduous state ratification process.