The other side of corporate speech

There are reports that the NFL is monitoring Arizona's SB 1062, which gives private businesses the right to refuse service to anyone if providing service would violate their religious beliefs. Phoenix is scheduled to host next year's Super Bowl, but the league stated that such a bill would be inconsistent with the league's (stated and purported) policies of tolerance, inclusiveness, and non-discrimination for all sorts of reasons, including sexual orientation. The fear among Arizona business and political leaders now is that the NFL may move the game if this bill becomes law (it has passed both houses and is waiting the governor's signature). And there is precedent for this--the league moved the 1993 Super Bowl from Arizona (theme warning!) when it failed to recognize Martin Luther King Day as a state holiday.

But isn't this corporate speech? Isn't the NFL, a powerful entity, engaging in First Amendment expressive activities by using its economic influence to affect public policy? Isn't this exactly what critics of the "corporations have First Amendment rights" meme object to? (The NFL is not a corporation but an unincorporated association of associations, but I doubt that matters much for most arguments). Liberals and progressives and supporters of LGBT rights--the very groups most likely to be criticsl of Citizens United, are now quite pleased with, and supportive of, the NFL's stance and the (hoped-for) effect it could have on this horrific piece of public policy. But other than the valence of the political position at issue, how is this different than a large company trying to affect environmental policy or elections (which, in turn, will define policy)?

This gets at  what I always have regarded as an inconsistency in many anti-corporate-speech arguments. We like businesses that are socially conscious and that work towards the public good. But that must mean they have the same right to define (what they regard as) the public good as anyone else. It cannot simply be that entity speech is ok when it promotes LGBT rights, but not ok when it promotes something we do not support.

Update: Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the bill.