That is the way I understood it, “corporations” were legal people based on a clerk’s insertion.
That said, the idea that an Entity has no inherent right to expose it’s views is unsustainable, be that Entity “Joe” who flips burgers or Exxon, who deals in energy the idea of curtailing speech is heinous to the Constitution’s mandate of a free market place of ideas.
Correct, it is inherent to free association. I'm all for dumping corporate "equal protection" though.