By Lawrence Hurley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Wednesday the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling lifting limits on corporate spending in political campaigns has harmed American democracy, just hours after several activists staged a rare protest in the court's chambers to draw attention to the fifth anniversary of the decision.
The activist group 99Rise said seven of its members were arrested in the protest after they created a commotion inside the court's chambers by vociferously denouncing the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling.
In a statement released later by the White House, Obama raised the same concerns as the protesters.
"The Citizens United decision was wrong, and it has caused real harm to our democracy," Obama said. "With each new campaign season, this dark money floods our airwaves with more and more political ads that pull our politics into the gutter. It's time to reverse this trend."
The court's 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case dismantled restrictions on independent corporate and union expenditures in federal elections.
Critics argue that the ruling opened the floodgates for money from corporations and undisclosed donors to flow into American politics and further boosted the influence of the wealthy in the electoral process. Political spending by undisclosed donors is sometimes called "dark money."
COMMOTION IN COURT
The usually tranquil Supreme Court chambers were jarred when one person stood up and denounced the Citizens United ruling just as the justices prepared to begin issuing decisions on cases argued earlier in the term.
As police were taking that person out of the chamber after wrestling the demonstrator to the ground, another protester started shouting "one person one vote" amid the clamor of chairs being knocked over. Another demonstrator began shouting about "the 99 percent," a reference to the majority of Americans as opposed to the richest 1 percent of the population.
The commotion lasted about a couple of minutes before police removed several protesters and the court got back to business, issuing rulings and hearing oral arguments in a closely watched housing discrimination case.
The 99Rise group, calling itself a "democracy movement," issued a statement saying its protest was aimed at highlighting "the consequences of the free flow of private money rushing into our public political system." The group said it took video footage of the incident.
It was not the first disruption in the court chambers over the 2010 ruling. In February 2014, a 99Rise member interrupted proceedings in a patent case by shouting slogans like "Money is not speech," "Corporations are not people" and "Overturn Citizens United."
Since the Citizens United ruling, there has been an escalation in such spending in U.S. presidential and congressional elections.
Obama has been critical of the ruling since the day it was issued and took the justices to task just days later during his State of the Union address with members of the court present.
The high court was sharply divided in the 2010 ruling. The conservative justices in the majority emphasized the free speech rights of corporations under the U.S. Constitution and found that the government had no right to regulate political speech. The court's liberals warned that such unfettered campaign spending would have a corrosive effect on democracy.
Outbursts in the Supreme Court are rare. The most high-profile incident took place in 1983, when Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt was ejected from the court for shouting obscenities at the justices during oral arguments in a libel case.