candidate expenditure limits in the university student body elections at the university of montana via laws of the university of montana student government provides that any candidate for student senate is limited to spending one hundred dollars on campaigning you know there are thirteen thousand students on campus and most of whom are eligible to vote which limits the parents was publishing advertising and distributing literature a university of montana student government is a stablished by the laws of montana and exercise of governmental power they spend over approximately five hundred thousand dollars and public funds which are student fees and they appoint members of the university committees that govern the university and of course the first amendment has this most urgent application and campaigns for public office and certainly the u s supreme court decision republican party of minnesota versus white has established that that those first amendment rights are applicable to elections regardless university of montana student to have standing to be involved in the process and look to it to be a candidate that anyone can can campaign in fact outside groups of people from new york city  voter limit the students just like they're limited to citizens in the federal system and their qualifications for office just like you have to be a citizen and thirty five years old to run for president of states there are qualifications for being a candidate would you make the same argument if this were first grade election of president of the first grade class it had a public school and well it's really depends upon two factors one is that the government as they enter the us stablish by the government exercising governmental power which clearly this student government and university might have it is actual size and governmental power and secondly what kind of form has been created out you're telling me the criteria but you're not wanting to answer my question i don't know the facts you'd have to give me more well i guess mike my question is really aimed at finding out what  and based on what we've seen on the record here that the university has a lot of the same goals here that a lot of what it is doing is educational which is completely different from a city council election or rational action an hazelton imposes certain legal requirements with respect and ducting such activities in secondary and elementary schools with respect to universit speech and individual student speech that that is what distinguishes a tanker and and and rosenberger for southworth and hazelton because in those it circumstances the court found that the speech was actually government speech because it was a funded by government and big government controlled the content of the speech so there is no such thing here this is purely private speech your fifty signatures or fifty people you have to be a student with it as a certain number  but after all the you know more than ten thousand students here and the whole idea is that students are given the choice to elect people who are going to exercise governmental power over them that is distribute money to their organizations or not this is a campaign speech and the only the only one that is limited as a candidate to spend more than one hundred dollars everyone else can participate that's what the forum is that the university has created participation of anyone and in fact they do it in the record is an advertisement that was run independently posted around campus by apparently very groups and whether or not they were actually student groups or not  students can say and as i mentioned there are times place in matter limits in montana those are not challenged in this in this case on only that those that affect what  your honor consistent with the u s supreme court opinion in the year two thousand the southworth versus university of wisconsin order of regents i think it's safe to say that the us supreme court has determine the answer to your question must be not all to the extent that students find allocations can be somehow distributed by student governments at public universities on the basis of political viewpoint the law is now very clearly established that there must be viewpoint neutrality and how funds are allocated but that gets me into the southworth case as a general legal principle your hon because there's a court ruled that despite any other first amendment infringements that might otherwise exist in the way that public university student governments function when all is said and done they function  educational arena as an educational program and as long as there's a viewpoint neutral approach to allocating these funds then the other more typical first amendment types of considerations that you might well see apply to a non educational non student government setting including those mentioned by appellate counsel would likely apply so southwards as given this very very the law here i would also refer this court to an opinion by the ninth circuit if your for the southwards opinion came up and that was one written by judge thomas and rounds versus the organ public interest research group which was not a student government case of course a did involve student fees going to the public interest research group in oregon and judge thomas there's a very good job perhaps in anticipation of what the southwest case which was being litigated in the seventh circuit at about the same time was going towards when he points out you simply must treat educational settings differently your first amendment analysis involving student area education setting there are all manners of extra curricular activities that are part of an integral learning experience for students at the university of montana and let's not forget that student government at a public and university students on the other hand with high school students which is by the way where the hazelwood case was about somewhere of the middle but i think the issue of a institutionally sponsor of speech is really public forum i find that hard we understand that and that if you were to look at as a limited public forum you'd apply to apply reasonable analysis and then then of course we would get into whether or not these particular restrictions are reasonable under a circumstances and we would point the court the excerpts of record involving the reasons that these particular regulations have been adopted how they work and we think that they serve a very valid educational purpose i guess we would take strong exception to the notion that a a student government is somehow a public forum and be wealthy explicit point made by appellate counsel and also the implicit reasoning in that point that somehow political speech campaign speech cannot be regulated by the government in a governmental setting if you take a look at the forbes four sergeant so educational television case by the u s supreme court ninety nine you see here a classic case  government regulation exclusion of campaign speech in the public universe at the public television station involving congressional campaign candidates if the government can exclude certainly it can regulate he's really spending two hundred forty dollars instead of one hundred dollars this is not mr got ross barring the election this is the this is true your honor and again the the principle here probably should have nothing to do with with but office that was completely rejected in buckley risible leo mr buckley is a very wealthy man and the supreme court didn't say we want to have an wealthy people also run against mr buckley so therefore it's ok to limit the kind permissible under the first amendment when public office is at stake your honor but we just said lee have to insist on the difference between an educational setting what is the educational again what is the p educational purpose of limiting mr flint from spending two hundred forty dollars it's to evolve your honor first inclusion which we believe is that is not only a legitimate but a compelling public university interest to encourage or at least to permit the conditions to be created to encourage the as wide as possible the inclusion of students to be able to run for office and that does distinguish this from the other keiser any  invaluable and we would submit a compelling educational purpose also there simply as long as we're on a compelling state interest there's simply no other way to foster inclusion again leaving aside whether specific amounts might or might not seem at first or second or even third glance to be appropriate and i would submit that that's something that the university rather than the courts should be that this is a good maker on but how else do we keep only wealthy people from participating in student government if in fact this the students with money decide they want to run for student government and have the ability to spend unlimited wealth to to run for office very soon we're going to see a student government that looks much much different from the student goals exactly the argument was used against mr buckley and which lost but the difference your honor would be the educational setting what is the educational s advantage or honor and of course there's the self government decision making powers and process that our student government elected officials engage and after their successfully so elected the office and th of course is part and parcel of why a public university has and should have student government is to teach students responsible leadership and and behavior i'm not going to sit here and are stand here rather argue that every student government decision this is is by objective standards one hundred percent responsible that we would all agree is responsible but remember students ever got to make mistakes the time to make letter i'm glad to address it because it's something that we talked about the issue before the court and brown was clearly whether the student who wrote the graduate thesis had a right to to to put into this these this contrary to the curricular requirements of the graduate program what he put in the issue of extra curricular activity was simply not in front of the court at that particular type certainly the hazelwood line of reasoning was before the court and we had the whole state versus carter case which had been in the seventh circuit and they well i guess it was working its way up to the seventh circu giving grades for people's participation and that's the curriculum this is set up to exercise governmental power to do specific governmental things distribute money and of course under southey worth as opposed t he way it was described that that money can be distributed contrary to the viewpoints of certain students as to whether or not those particular messages ought to be funded and of course here we have an election not content neutral under southworth the university one of the you know that the distribution of student fees by the university of wisconsin was being done on a viewpoint neutral basis but it was being down on a concept the neutral basis and some people objected they didn't want aids education or they didn't why religious student groups to be funded so there was contact without that out and the court said look and the decision to distribute these funds we have political i mean is are we have government speech because they are funding it in controlling the content and  students can't you know may object but so be it the university can still do it well these are the decisions that individual students the university of montana may disagree with it and so they want to support candidates that agree with their point mean they could do that so secondly that this is really irrational i mean what is the educational purpose of teaching people how to run campaigns under eight hundred dollars spending limit in the united states spending limits by candidates are unconstitutional so what are you teaching the students of yours how about the students that are of average means well they can't raise more than one hundred dollars and what do people do in the united states when they run students learn how to convince their peers one on one by talking to them rather than learning how to raise money those are both times of learning i don't disagree with that but why isn't the university free to pick one of those as the preferred thing it wants to convince people of those for you you've got to get out in the public forum you've got to use your shoe leather you've got to meet people you've got to sometimes up look in american elections all these things are done so that there is no relationship between prohibiting people from advertising and going door to door people spend millions of dollars for office in america and they go door to door at the same time because they have the time available to do it so and actually to the extent that i require people to go door to door which is prohibited if you want to do in the dorm so they don't even advance that interest by the regulations because it's prohibited to do that there you know that run fifteen so we'll start there all right thank you whenever you're ready to