Sorry for not being sufficiently clear on that, CC. As I stated in post #140 of your other thread:
"...if a business owner incorporates, he should be prepared to accept further limitations to his right of association. A corporation is an artificial entity with an artificial status, created and bestowed by government, which modifies the equal standing we had as private citizens. Why would you go through the process of incorporating your business unless you felt you had some advantage to gain that you couldn't enjoy as a private citizen? I'm not saying you can't make corporate policies, just that as an entity with a government-granted artificial status, your corporation can't infringe on the Bill of Rights. Or to put it another way, if the government is (or should be) bound by the BOR, they have no authority to grant a gun-show promoter an exempt status from it.
In addition, your corporate policies don't carry the force of law. If a customer disregards those policies, your recourse is limited to breaking off the transaction, unless a contractual agreement provides otherwise."
Here's why I think that, and you're free to disagree (as if I had to say so).
We the people, being created equal and endowed with rights by our creator, after the end of the War for Independence, were faced with the task of deciding what kind of government would be appropriate for to govern our (then newly formed) society. We already had state governments, and through them we sent delegetes to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, who came up with the Constitution, which our state ratifying conventions later approved. It made no mention of giving the government any power to create the artificial status of "incorporation", even though similar laws had existed in Britain since the 1760's or before, and the delegates must have been aware of them. Soon afterwards, the Bill of Rights was amended to the Constitution, to make good and sure it was understood that the federal government was bound to treat its citizens in a certain manner. The federal government operated under the BOR restrictions for quite some time, although now they have gutted many of them.
Later on, possibly as early as the 1850's, state governments began granting corporate status to business ventures headquartered within their boundaries. By the time of the 16th amendment (establishing the power to require a federal income tax) and the creation of the Federal Reserve System, corporate business status was being recognised and granted by the federal government as well, and this era also saw the Supreme Court ruling that the BOR was binding on state governments as well as the federal (by a process referred to, confusingly, as "incorporation").
Whether the federal government had the authority to grant corporate status, that authority not enumerated in the Constitution, or whether states do, if not specifically granted in their constitutions, is a discussion for another day (and probly another forum). But business corporations have come to be viewed in a legal sense as a separate entity from their owners, and enjoy certain tax benefits and limitations on liability which private citizens do not have. So what I'm saying is, an artificial entity (not a private citizen) operating under a government granted status does not have the rights that private citizens do, it only has the rights that its creator (i.e. a state or federal government) has the authority to endow it with. If the state and federal governments cannot infringe the BOR, they cannot create an artificial entity that can do so.
I never meant to say that business corporations were equal to the government in power, or that they were on the same plane, just that they are bound by the Bill of Rights because they were created by a government that is. Sorry for the confusion.
Parker