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Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 11, 2007 Decided February 27, 2007

No. 06-5225

DKT INTERNATIONAL, INC.,

APPELLEE

v.

UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

AND

RANDALL L. TOBIAS, ADMINISTRATOR, UNITED STATES

AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, IN HIS OFFICIAL

CAPACITY,

APPELLANTS

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 05cv01604)

Gregory G. Katsas, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney

General, U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for

appellants. With him on the briefs were Peter D. Keisler,

Assistant Attorney General, Jeffrey A. Taylor, U.S. Attorney,

and Mark B. Stern, Michael S. Raab, and Sharon Swingle,

Attorneys. Vincent M. Garvey, Attorney, entered an appearance.

USCA Case #06-5225 Document #1025106 Filed: 02/27/2007 Page 1 of 10
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Julie M. Carpenter argued the cause for appellee. With her

on the brief were Martina E. Vandenberg, Laura K. Abel, and

David S. Udell.

Caroline M. Brown was on the brief for amici curiae

Population Council, Inc., et al. in support of appellee.

Before: HENDERSON, RANDOLPH and KAVANAUGH, Circuit

Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge RANDOLPH.

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge: The official position of the

United States is that eradicating prostitution and sex trafficking

is an integral part of the worldwide fight against HIV/AIDS. In

awarding grants to private organizations for HIV/AIDS relief

efforts, the government – through the U.S. Agency for

International Development – only funds organizations that share

this view. DKT International refused to certify that it has a

policy opposing prostitution and sex trafficking, and therefore

did not qualify for a grant. The district court struck down the

funding condition on the ground that it violated DKT’s freedom

of speech under the First Amendment. We reverse. 

In 2003 Congress enacted the United States Leadership

Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act, Pub. L. No.

108-25, 117 Stat 711, and the President proposed $15 billion for

fighting the worldwide spread of HIV/AIDS, see 22 U.S.C.

§ 7601(28). The Act directs the President to establish programs

“to treat individuals infected with HIV/AIDS,” id. § 7611(a)(1),

to “prevent the further spread of HIV infections,” id., and to

“maximize United States capabilities in the areas of technical

assistance and training and research, including vaccine

research,” id. § 7611(a)(8). The Act states that “the reduction of

HIV/AIDS behavioral risks shall be a priority of all prevention

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efforts in terms of funding, educational messages, and activities

by promoting abstinence from sexual activity and substance

abuse, encouraging monogamy and faithfulness, promoting the

effective use of condoms, and eradicating prostitution, the sex

trade, rape, sexual assault and sexual exploitation of women and

children.” Id. § 7611(a)(4).

Congress found that funding the relief efforts of private

organizations was “critical to the success” of the international

fight against HIV/AIDS. Id. § 7621(a)(4). Congress thus

authorized the President to “furnish assistance, on such terms

and conditions as the President may determine,” to

nongovermental organizations. Id. § 2151b-2(c)(1); see id.

§ 7631(b)(1). The Act requires, however, that funds go only to

organizations that share the Act’s disapproval of prostitution and

sex trafficking. Organizations may not use funds granted under

the Act to “promote or advocate the legalization or practice of

prostitution or sex trafficking.” Id. § 7631(e). And under

§ 7631(f), funds are unavailable “to any group or organization

that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and

sex trafficking,” with the exception of four organizations, three

of which are public organizations, and one of which deals only

with vaccine research. It is the § 7631(f) condition – that an

organization have a policy opposing prostitution and sex

trafficking to be eligible for funding – that DKT challenges.

Congress authorized the U.S. Agency for International

Development to administer grants, cooperative agreements, and

contracts pursuant to the Act. Id. § 7602(6); see 22 C.F.R. part

226. The Agency implemented § 7631(f) by requiring a

boilerplate provision in grant contracts and cooperative

agreements, and a certification that applicants are in compliance

with the provision. See OFFICE OF ACQUISITION &ASSISTANCE,

U.S. AGENCY FOR INT’L DEV., AAPD 05-04, IMPLEMENTATION

OF THE U.S. LEADERSHIP AGAINST HIV/AIDS, TUBERCULOSIS

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AND MALARIA ACT OF 2003 – ELIGIBILITY LIMITATION ON THE

USE OF FUNDS AND OPPOSITION TO PROSTITUTION AND SEX

TRAFFICKING 5-6 (2005). The contractual provision states that

recipient organizations and any subrecipients “must have a

policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking,” id.

at 5, but does not specify any particular language or format. The

certification requirement applies only to the prime recipient, id.

at 6, which must include the boilerplate provision in all

subagreements, id. at 5. Violation of the provision may be used

as a ground for terminating the underlying agreement between

the Agency and the prime recipient. Id.

DKT International provides family planning and HIV/AIDS

prevention programming in foreign countries, and receives about

16 percent of its total budget from Agency grants. DKT

operates as a subgrantee under Family Health International

(FHI) in Vietnam, where it distributes condoms and condom

lubricant. In June 2005, FHI provided DKT with a

subagreement to run an Agency-funded lubricant distribution

program. Included in the subagreement was a certification that

DKT “has a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex

trafficking.” The subagreement stated that the certification

requirement “is an express term and condition of the agreement

and any violation of it shall be grounds for unilateral termination

of the agreement by FHI or [the Agency] prior to the end of its

term.” DKT did not, and does not, have a policy for or against

prostitution and sex trafficking. It therefore refused to sign the

subagreement with the certification requirement. FHI then

cancelled the grant and informed DKT that FHI was “unable to

provide additional funding to DKT.”

DKT alleged that it refuses to adopt a policy opposing

prostitution because this might result in “stigmatizing and

alienating many of the people most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS –

the sex workers . . ..” It claims that the certification requirement

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in § 7631(f) violates the First Amendment because it constrains

DKT’s speech in other programs for which it does not receive

federal funds and because it forces DKT to convey a message

with which it does not necessarily agree.

The government may speak through elected representatives

as well as other government officers and employees. Or it may

hire private agents to speak for it, as in Rust v. Sullivan, 500

U.S. 173 (1991). When it communicates its message, either

through public officials or private entities, the government can –

and often must – discriminate on the basis of viewpoint.

Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819,

833 (1995); see also DKT Mem’l Fund Ltd. v. Agency for Int’l

Dev., 887 F.2d 275, 289 (D.C. Cir. 1989). In sponsoring Nancy

Reagan’s “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign, the First

Amendment did not require the government to sponsor

simultaneously a “Just Say Yes” campaign. Or to repeat the

example in Rust: “When Congress established a National

Endowment for Democracy to encourage other countries to

adopt democratic principles . . . it was not constitutionally

required to fund a program to encourage competing lines of

political philosophy such as communism and fascism.” 500

U.S. at 194; see also DKT Mem’l, 887 F.2d at 290.

In this case the government’s objective is to eradicate

HIV/AIDS. One of the means of accomplishing this objective

is for the United States to speak out against legalizing

prostitution in other countries. The Act’s strategy in combating

HIV/AIDS is not merely to ship condoms and medicine to

regions where the disease is rampant. Repeatedly the Act

speaks of fostering behavioral change, see, e.g., 22 U.S.C.

§ 7601(22)(E), and spreading “educational messages,” id.

§ 7611(a)(4). The Act’s stated source of inspiration is the

success in Uganda, where President Yoweri Museveni “spoke

out early, breaking long-standing cultural taboos, and changed

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1

 DKT assumes, as does the government, that if an

organization signs a pledge in accordance with § 7631(f) and then

goes out and advocates legalizing prostitution it will have violated the

condition on its grant. Although neither the statute nor the regulations

expressly say as much, we will accept the position of the parties. 

widespread perceptions about the disease.” Id. § 7601(20)(B).

The Act details the program Museveni instituted, which

primarily involved a “message” about “a fundamental change in

sexual behavior.” Id. § 7601(20)(C). “Uganda’s success shows

that behavior change . . . is a very successful way to prevent the

spread of HIV.” Id. § 7601(20)(D). Spending money to

convince people at risk of HIV/AIDS to change their behavior

is necessarily a message.

Everyone, including DKT, agrees that the government may

bar grantees from using grant money to promote legalizing

prostitution. But DKT complains that § 7631(f) constrains its

speech in other programs, for which it does not receive federal

funds.1 That effect, DKT argues, makes the case like FCC v.

League of Women Voters of California, 468 U.S. 364 (1984),

and unlike Rust v. Sullivan. We think the opposite. The

restriction struck down in League of Women Voters prohibited

public broadcasting stations from editorializing. The Court

pointed out that a public broadcasting station could not

editorialize with its nonfederal funds even if its federal grants

amounted to only a small fraction of its income. 468 U.S. at

400. Therefore the restriction did not simply govern the use of

federal funds. Id. Rust, on the other hand, upheld regulations

prohibiting federally funded family planning services from

engaging in abortion counseling or in any way advocating

abortion as a method of family planning. 500 U.S. at 178.

The difference between the two decisions, as the Court later

explained, is that in Rust “the government did not create a

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2

 Citing Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705 (1977), Speiser v.

Randall, 357 U.S. 513 (1958), and West Virginia Board of Education

v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), DKT argues that the government

may not “compel a private organization to adopt government policy

or speech as its own.” In each of those cases, the penalty for refusing

to propagate the message was denial of an already-existing public

benefit. None involved the government’s selective funding of

organizations best equipped to communicate its message. Offering to

fund organizations who agree with the government’s viewpoint and

will promote the government’s program is far removed from cases in

which the government coerced its citizens into promoting its message

on pain of losing their public education, Barnette, 319 U.S. at 629, or

access to public roads, Wooley, 430 U.S. at 715.

program to encourage private speech but instead used private

speakers to transmit specific information pertaining to its own

program. We recognized that when the government

appropriates public funds to promote a particular policy of its

own it is entitled to say what it wishes.” Rosenberger, 515 U.S.

at 833. Here too the government has not created “a program to

encourage private speech,” as it did in funding public

broadcasting in League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. at 367-68,

and as it did in Rosenberger in funding student publications, 515

U.S. at 823-25. In this case, as in Rust, “the government’s own

message is being delivered,” Legal Servs. Corp. v. Velazquez,

531 U.S. 533, 541 (2001).2

Under Rust, as interpreted in Rosenberger and Velazquez,

the government may thus constitutionally communicate a

particular viewpoint through its agents and require those agents

not convey contrary messages. We think it follows that in

choosing its agents, the government may use criteria to ensure

that its message is conveyed in an efficient and effective

fashion. Our decision in DKT Memorial Fund, 887 F.2d at 290-

91, so held. The Supreme Court has also recognized that the

government may take “appropriate steps” to ensure that its

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message is “neither garbled nor distorted.” Rosenberger, 515

U.S. at 833. This is particularly true where the government is

speaking on matters with foreign policy implications, as it is

here. See DKT Mem’l, 887 F.2d at 289-91. The government’s

brief summarizes these points: “It would make little sense for

the government to provide billions of dollars to encourage the

reduction of HIV/AIDS behavioral risks, including prostitution

and sex trafficking, and yet to engage as partners in this effort

organizations that are neutral toward or even actively promote

the same practices sought to be eradicated. The effectiveness of

the government’s viewpoint-based program would be

substantially undermined, and the government’s message

confused, if the organizations hired to implement that program

by providing HIV/AIDS programs and services to the public

could advance an opposite viewpoint in their privately-funded

operations.”

Rust is different, DKT argues, because it involved funding

restrictions only on projects, not on grantees. It is true that only

project restrictions were before the Court in Rust, a point the

Court stressed. See Rust, 500 U.S. at 196. The Court said the

clinic in Rust could advocate abortion if it conducted that

activity “through programs that are separate and independent

from the project that receives Title X funds.” Id. at 196 (citation

omitted). Rust likened this to Regan v. Taxation with

Representation of Washington, 461 U.S. 540 (1983), in which

the Court upheld a tax exemption for non-profit groups, see 26

U.S.C. § 501(c)(3), that excluded lobbying activities. Rust, 500

U.S. at 197-98; see Regan, 461 U.S. at 544. Regan found that

although the organization at issue did not qualify for a tax

exemption under § 501(c)(3) for its lobbying activities, it could

reorganize to a “dual structure” with a “§ 501(c)(3) organization

for nonlobbying activities and a § 501(c)(4) organization for

lobbying.” Regan, 461 U.S. at 544. This, the Court held in

Rust, stood in contrast to the “unconstitutional conditions” cases

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3

 In League of Women Voters, the Court made the same point:

“Of course, if Congress were to adopt a revised version of § 399 that

permitted noncommercial educational broadcasting stations to

establish ‘affiliate’ organizations which could then use the station’s

facilities to editorialize with nonfederal funds, such a statutory

mechanism would plainly be valid under the reasoning of [Regan].

Under such a statute, public broadcasting stations would be free, in the

same way that the charitable organization in [Regan] was free, to make

known its views on matters of public importance through its

nonfederally funded, editorializing affiliate without losing federal

grants for its noneditorializing broadcast activities.” 468 U.S. at 400

(citation omitted).

4

 Note the following exchange at oral argument:

COURT: Suppose that DKT just spins off a subsidiary

corporation, and the subsidiary takes the pledge, but the

parent organization does not. Is that okay? There’s nothing

in the regulations that would prohibit that, is there?

GOVERNMENT COUNSEL: There’s absolutely nothing in

the regulations that could prohibit it. . .. There’s nothing

preventing them from doing that.

COURT: All their complaints could be solved by a corporate

reorganization?

GOVERNMENT COUNSEL: That’s right.

Oral Argument, 8:10.

in which the government “effectively prohibit[ed] the recipient

from engaging in the protected conduct outside the scope of the

federally funded program.” Rust, 500 U.S. at 197.3 We see no

difference here. Nothing prevents DKT from itself remaining

neutral and setting up a subsidiary organization that certifies it

has a policy opposing prostitution. As the government stated at

oral argument,4

 the subsidiary would qualify for government

funds as long as the two organizations’ activities were kept

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5

 DKT also points to the four organizations exempted from

the certification requirement as evidence that the government is not

actually concerned with private organizations’ policies being imputed

to the government. But the Act’s underinclusiveness does not violate

the First Amendment. See Ruggiero v. FCC, 317 F.3d 239, 250-51

(D.C. Cir. 2003) (Randolph, J., concurring). “[T]he relevance of a

statute’s underinclusiveness is that it may reveal discrimination on the

basis of viewpoint or content, or may undercut the statute’s purported

non-discriminatory purpose.” Id. Because viewpoint discrimination

raises no First Amendment concerns when the government is

speaking, the underinclusiveness of the certification requirement is

immaterial.

sufficiently separate. The parent organization need not adopt the

policy.5

The Act does not compel DKT to advocate the

government’s position on prostitution and sex trafficking; it

requires only that if DKT wishes to receive funds it must

communicate the message the government chooses to fund.

This does not violate the First Amendment. We therefore

reverse the district court.

So ordered.

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