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The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision to ease restrictions on how much corporations and labor unions can funnel into political campaign ads has already prompted one Maryland company to take the ruling one step further — and run for Congress.

Taking the court's "corporations have the same rights as people" reasoning to what it calls its logical conclusion, Silver Spring public relations and design firm Murray Hill Inc. plans to file to run in the Republican primary in Maryland's 8th Congressional District, now represented by Christopher Van Hollen Jr. (D) of Kensington. Eric Hensal, president of Murray Hill and the campaign's "designated human," insists his intent is serious.

"The Supreme Court decision has created a lot of interesting questions," Hensal said. "There is a certain logic that the American public deserves to see played out."

The decision maintains a century-old ban on corporations and unions directly contributing to politicians or political parties. Corporations and unions previously had to spend through a political action committee. Numerous Maryland companies — including military and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin and hotelier Marriott International, both in Bethesda, and Constellation Energy Group of Baltimore — have active political action committees.

While it's difficult to predict the high court ruling's ramifications, media companies could see some additional political ad revenue during election seasons, said John Morton, president of Silver Spring media consulting company Morton Research.

"Most of that will probably go to television stations, rather than newspapers," he said.

But Morton didn't think there would be a huge increase in corporate campaign ads.

"They risk alienating as many people as they persuade," he said.

Morton expected mostly larger businesses, rather than smaller companies, to get more active.

Murray Hill is believed to be the first "corporate person" to exercise the right to directly run for office, Hensal said.

"Until now corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence peddling to achieve their goals in Washington," Murray Hill said in a statement. "But thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle man and run for office ourselves."

Murray Hill's clients include the American Federation of Teachers and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Its campaign features a Facebook page that has attracted more than 1,680 fans and a video on YouTube.

Van Hollen, who could not be reached for comment on Murray Hill's plans, said in a statement that the Supreme Court's decision "throws out decades of precedent designed to protect the citizens and the integrity of our political process against big money special interests. It will open the floodgate, if left unchecked and unchallenged, to more and more special interest money."

Van Hollen said he will "explore every option to make sure that we do not turn back the clock on decades of precedent that was designed to prevent big corporation special interests from corrupting the political process."

Several unions with active chapters in Maryland have denounced the Supreme Court decision. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement that the court's decision "further tilted the playing field in favor of business corporations in public elections."

"We believe the court wrongly treated corporate expenditures the same as union expenditures," Trumka said. "Unions, unlike businesses, are democratically-controlled, nonprofit membership organizations representing working men and women across the country, and their independent speech should accordingly be given greater protection."

Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, which represents nurses, janitors and government employees, said in a statement that the court changed the PAC process to favor big corporations.

"Now, corporations don't have to ask their shareholders to contribute to electoral politics," Burger said. "They can just take as much of their money as they want, without seeking their shareholders' permission, and without even telling their shareholders what they are doing. And that includes money from foreign shareholders that had no right to contribute to electoral politics under the law that was overturned by the court."