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Page Number: 10

6 

AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY FOUNDATION v. BONTA 

Opinion of the Court 

view, the panel had impermissibly overridden the District
Court’s  factual  findings  and  evaluated  the  disclosure  re-
quirement  under  too  lenient  a  degree  of  scrutiny.    Id.,  at 
1184–1187. 

We granted certiorari.  592 U. S. ___ (2021). 

II 
A 
The  First  Amendment  prohibits  government  from 
“abridging  the  freedom  of  speech,  or  of  the  press;  or  the 
right  of  the  people  peaceably  to  assemble,  and  to  petition
the  Government  for  a  redress  of  grievances.”    This  Court 
has “long understood as implicit in the right  to engage in
activities protected by the First Amendment a correspond-
ing right to associate with others.”  Roberts v. United States 
Jaycees,  468  U. S.  609,  622  (1984).    Protected  association 
furthers “a wide variety of political, social, economic, edu-
cational, religious, and cultural ends,” and “is especially im-
portant in preserving political and cultural diversity and in
shielding dissident expression from suppression by the ma-
jority.”  Ibid.  Government  infringement  of  this  freedom 
“can take a number of forms.”  Ibid.  We have held, for ex-
ample,  that  the  freedom  of  association  may  be  violated 
where a group is required to take in members it does not 
want,  see  id.,  at  623,  where  individuals  are  punished  for
their political affiliation, see Elrod v. Burns, 427 U. S. 347, 
355 (1976) (plurality opinion), or where members of an or-
ganization are denied benefits based on the organization’s 
message, see Healy v. James, 408 U. S. 169, 181–182 (1972).
We have also noted that “[i]t is hardly a novel perception 
that compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged 
in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on free-
dom of association as [other] forms of governmental action.” 
NAACP  v.  Alabama  ex  rel.  Patterson,  357  U. S.  449,  462 
(1958).  NAACP v. Alabama involved this chilling effect in 
its starkest form.  The NAACP opened an Alabama office