Nahmod Law

Justice Souter’s Penultimate Government Speech Case: Garcetti v. Ceballos

In Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), an exceptionally important public employee free speech case discussed at greater length in a prior post, the Court held that a deputy district attorney’s First Amendment rights were not violated when he was allegedly retaliated against by his supervisors for writing a memo to them complaining of problems in the prosecution of a criminal case. The Court declared that public employee speech engaged in pursuant to that employee’s official duties was not protected from employer discipline by the First Amendment.

Writing for the Court, Justice Kennedy indicated that there was a government speech element present whenever public employees spoke pursuant to their official duties:

The significant point is that the memo was written pursuant to Ceballos’ official duties. Restricting speech that owes its existence to a public employee’s professional responsibilities does not infringe any liberties the employee might have enjoyed as a private citizen. It simply reflects the exercise of employer control over what the employer itself has commissioned or created.

547 U.S. at 421-22. Read the rest of this entry »

Scotus Review: The 2009 Term

On October 29, 2010, my colleague, Professor Christopher Schmidt, and I presented a review of the Supreme Court‘s important decisions from its 2009 Term (through June, 2010).

Our presentations took place at Chicago-Kent and were sponsored by the Kent chapters of the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society. Kent’s Institute for Law and the Humanities, of which I am a co-director, also sponsored.

The two presentations, 30 minutes each, were followed by 15 minutes of questions and discussion.

Cases Covered

Professor Schmidt spoke first about U.S. v. Comstock (Necessary and Proper Clause); McDonald v. City of Chicago (Second Amendment and incorporation); and Citizens United v. FEC (corporate campaign expenditures and the First Amendment).

I spoke next about the following First Amendment free speech and religion cases: Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (speech and material support for terrorists); U.S. v. Stevens (animal cruelty videos, the subject of my more extensive video presentation at the Chicago Bar Association, as noted in a previous post);  Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (college religious student group recognition and forum analysis); and  Salazar v. Buono (cross as war memorial and its sale by government).

These presentations are accessible through the following link:

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I spoke about animal cruelty, crush videos and the Supreme Court‘s First Amendment decision in U.S. v. Stevens, 130 S. Ct. 1577 (2010), on October 21, 2010, at the Chicago Bar Association. I was asked to do so by the CBA’s Animal Law Committee.

My videotaped presentation, which I am pleased to make available to readers of this blog, lasts about forty minutes. It is followed by twenty minutes of discussion, also videotaped.

The first part of my presentation deals with the Free Exercise Clause, the second part with obscenity and child pornography under the Free Speech Clause, the third part with the Stevens decision itself and the last part with crush video legislation pending in Congress.

I hope you find it both interesting and informative.

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The Government Speech Doctrine Comes of Age

The government speech doctrine came of age in a series of cases beginning with Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association, 544 U.S. 550 (2005), where Justice Souter forcefully set out his own views in dissent.

But before addressing Johanns, I think it is worth mentioning that shortly after University of Wisconsin v. Southworth, 529 U.S. 217 (2000), discussed in a prior post, the Court held in Legal Services Corporation v. Velazquez, 531 U.S. 533 (2001), that a federal statute violated the First Amendment because it prohibited recipients of Legal Services Corporation funds from providing legal representation for efforts to amend or challenge existing welfare laws, even if that legal representation was separately funded. Writing for the Court (including Justice Souter), Justice Kennedy explained and then distinguished Rust:

The Court in Rust did not place explicit reliance on the rationale that the counseling activities of the doctors under Title X amounted to government speech; when interpreting the holding in later cases, however, we have explained Rust on this understanding. We have said that viewpoint-based funding decisions can be sustained in instances in which the government is itself the speaker, or in instances, like Rust, in which the government “used private speakers to… transmit information pertaining to its own program.”

531 U.S. at 541 (citations omitted). However, according to the Court , not every government subsidy creates a government speech scenario. Where, as in Legal Services Corporation, government subsidized individuals and groups for the purpose of soliciting a diversity of views, then forum analysis is appropriate just as it was in Rosenberger. In these situations, when there is no “programmatic message,” the government may not discriminate on the basis of viewpoint. In the course of its opinion, the Court also emphasized the distorting effects of the funding condition on the adversary system and the legal process. For these reasons, the statute violated the First Amendment.

Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association

Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association, handed down in 2005, generated important doctrinal developments in government speech doctrine. Here, the Court, in an opinion by Justice Scalia, ruled that mandatory assessments on beef producers that were used to disseminate the advertisement, “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner,” did not violate the First Amendment because the advertisement constituted government speech. Johanns was very similar factually to an earlier case, United States v. United Foods, 533 U.S. 405 (2001), which had held that a government assessment on mushroom growers for generic advertisements was compelled speech forbidden by the First Amendment. But, unlike in United Foods, in Johanns the government argued that the advertisements were government speech since the Secretary of Agriculture exercised final control over the message. Read the rest of this entry »

University of Wisconsin v. Southworth

Two years after Finley, discussed in a prior post, University of Wisconsin v. Southworth , 529 U.S. 217 (2000) , presented a fact pattern similar to the one the Court had addressed in Rosenberger, also discussed in a prior post. This time, though, the First Amendment issue was raised by students who were being “taxed” to fund the speech of student organizations.

In Southworth, the Court, in an opinion by Justice Kennedy, held that a mandatory student activity fee assessed on students to support student organizations did not violate the First Amendment rights of students who objected to the political and ideological speech of certain funded organizations. Southworth was essentially a compelled speech/subsidy case, because the university had expressly declared that its disbursement of funds was not government speech. The Court therefore did not engage in government speech analysis.

A Possible Rationale for the Government Speech Doctrine: Political Accountability

Nevertheless, Justice Kennedy did discuss the government speech doctrine and its possible justification. He suggested that had Southworth involved government speech, it would have been outside the bounds of First Amendment scrutiny because political accountability, rather than judicial review, served to limit the government. “When the government speaks, for instance, to promote its own policies or to advance a particular idea, it is, in the end, accountable to the electorate and the political process for its advocacy. If the citizenry objects, newly elected officials later could espouse some different or contrary position.” 529 U.S. at 235. Read the rest of this entry »

On September 28, 2010, Professor Steven Heyman, Attorney Mazen Asbahi and I participated in a panel discussion at Chicago-Kent College of Law on the “Ground Zero Mosque”–the proposed Islamic cultural center–in Manhattan.

I spoke about the Religion Clauses and federal statutory law, Professor Heyman addressed the nature of the political discourse and Mr. Asbahi discussed the topic from an American Muslim perspective. All of this was followed by a spirited discussion among the panelists and with the audience.

The program is an hour long. It was sponsored by Kent’s Society of Law Students for Secularism (which organized the event) and co-sponsored by the Muslim Law Students Association, the National Lawyers Guild and the Institute for Law and Humanities.

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Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc.

In Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., 521 U.S. 457 (1997), the Court held that an assessment imposed by the Secretary of Agriculture on fruit growers for generic advertisements did not violate the First Amendment. The Court explained:  “First, the marketing orders impose no restraint on the freedom of any producer to communicate any message to any audience. Second, they do not compel any person to engage in any actual or symbolic speech. Third, they do not compel the producers to endorse or to finance any political or ideological views.”

Justice Souter dissented, arguing that the four-part Central Hudson test applied to such compelled commercial speech, and that the assessment failed the test. In a footnote, Justice Souter raised the government speech doctrine only to say that the government had never argued that it was applicable in Glickman. Perhaps indicative of his growing discomfort with the government speech doctrine, however, Justice Souter did not describe the doctrine in expansive terms but said that the doctrine meant only that “the government may have greater latitude in selecting content than otherwise permissible under the First Amendment.” Read the rest of this entry »

This is the third in a series of posts on now-retired Justice Souter’s positions on government speech. The first post was an introduction and the second addressed Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991).

Rosenberger v. Rectors of the University of Virginia

Fours years after Rust, the Court held in Rosenberger v. Rectors of the University of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819 (1995), that a public university’s refusal to fund a student magazine with a Christian theme, while at the same time funding other student organization publications, was a violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The Court found that the Student Activity Fund from which the Christian magazine was applying for funds was a “metaphysical” limited public forum that was intended to enable private speech, and as such could not discriminate according to viewpoint. Though the university argued that it was discriminating according to content (permitted in a limited public forum), the Court rejected this argument and effectively held that religious belief was a viewpoint.

Rosenberger is often cited for its broad language describing the government speech doctrine implicit in Rust. Justice Kennedy, writing for the Court, said: “We recognized [in Rust] that when the government appropriates public funds to promote a particular policy of its own it is entitled to say what it wishes. When the government disburses public funds to private entities to convey a governmental message, it may take legitimate and appropriate steps to ensure that its message is neither garbled nor distorted by the grantee.” 515 U.S. at 833 (citations omitted). However, Rosenberger itself was not a government speech case: the university had expressly stated that its speech was not at issue. In fact, one of the requirements imposed on student organizations for receiving funding was signing a disclaimer that distanced the university from the speech of the recipients. Read the rest of this entry »

Rust v. Sullivan

Oral argument in Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991), was held on October 30, 1990, which made Rust one of the first cases that Justice Souter heard. In a 5-4 vote that almost certainly would have gone the other way had Justice Brennan still been on the Court, the Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist, upheld federal regulations that prohibited doctors from engaging in abortion counseling as part of a federally funded Title X project.

The ruling rested on the distinction between a subsidy and a restriction. The Court began with the premise that government may choose to fund one activity to the exclusion of another, even if the latter involves the exercise of a fundamental right. It then determined that Rust was not an “unconstitutional conditions” case, because Title X focused on the project rather than the grantee: Title X did not restrict the recipients of funding absolutely from engaging in pro-abortion activities; it merely mandated that Title X projects not include such activities. Therefore, if a doctor wished to go beyond the scope of a Title X program, he or she remained free to do so. Title X merely required that the funds for Title X projects be segregated from funds used to support activities beyond the scope allowed by Title X.

The Dissenters

Justice Blackmun dissented, joined by Justice Marshall and by Justice Stevens in part and by Justice O’Connor in part. “Until today, the Court has never upheld viewpoint- based suppression of speech simply because that suppression was a condition upon the acceptance of public funds.” For three of the dissenters (not including Justice O’Connor), what distinguished Rust from Regan v. Taxation with Representation of Washington, 461 U.S. 540 (1983), which dealt with funding coupled with conditions, was that Title X was in part aimed at the suppression of “dangerous ideas.” Because the counseling and referral provisions in Title X were both content and viewpoint based, they violated the First Amendment. The three dissenters further argued that the majority’s mantra that government is free to fund one activity to the exclusion of another was both overly simplistic and incorrect. Read the rest of this entry »

What Is Government Speech?

Simply put, when government itself speaks, rather than regulating the speech of private persons, its speech is immunized from any meaningful First Amendment scrutiny, including the prohibition against engaging in viewpoint discrimination.

Under the doctrine, government becomes a “market participant” in the marketplace of ideas rather than a regulator of that marketplace, and its First Amendment immunity is analogous to the dormant Commerce Clause immunity of state and local governments when they are market participants. Hughes v. Alexandria Scrap Corp., 426 U.S.794, 809-10 (1976).

The Government Speech Doctrine and the Tenure of Justice Souter

Justice David Souter, who replaced Justice William Brennan, was seated on October 3, 1990, and retired on June 29, 2009. As it turns out, Justice Souter’s tenure coincided exactly with the birth and development of the government speech doctrine in the Supreme Court. Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991), was handed down in 1991, and the most recent government speech decision, Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, 129 S. Ct. 1125 (2009), was handed down in 2009. Read the rest of this entry »