Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/12pdf/12-10_21p3.pdf
Page Number: 21.0

Cite as:  570 U. S. ____ (2013) 

3 

SCALIA, J., dissenting 

that  the  Government  demands  an  applicant  forswear—or 
that  the  Government  insists  an  applicant  favor—are
relevant to the program in question.  The program is valid 
only if the Government is entitled to disfavor the opposing
view (here, advocacy of or toleration of prostitution).  And 
if the program can disfavor it, so can the selection of those 
who are to administer the program.  There is no risk that 
this principle will enable the Government to discriminate 
arbitrarily against positions it disfavors.  It would not, for 
example,  permit  the  Government  to  exclude  from  bidding 
on  defense  contracts  anyone  who  refuses  to  abjure  pros-
titution.  But  here  a  central  part  of  the  Government’s
HIV/AIDS  strategy  is  the  suppression  of  prostitution,  by
which  HIV  is  transmitted.  It  is  entirely  reasonable  to
admit  to  participation  in  the  program  only  those  who
believe in that goal. 

According  to  the  Court,  however,  this  transgresses  a
constitutional  line  between  conditions  that  operate  inside 
a spending program and those that control speech outside 
of it.  I am  at a loss to explain what this central pillar of
the  Court’s  opinion—this  distinction  that  the  Court  itself 
admits  is  “hardly  clear”  and  “not  always  self-evident,” 
ante, at 8, 11—has to do with the First Amendment.  The 
distinction was alluded to, to be sure, in Rust v. Sullivan, 
500  U. S.  173  (1991),  but  not  as  (what  the  Court  now 
makes it) an invariable requirement for First Amendment 
validity.  That  the  pro-abortion  speech  prohibition  was 
limited  to  “inside  the  program”  speech  was  relevant  in 
Rust  because  the  program  itself  was  not  an  anti-abortion 
program.  The  Government  remained  neutral  on  that 
controversial  issue,  but  did  not  wish  abortion  to  be  pro-
moted  within  its  family-planning-services  program.    The 
statutory  objective  could  not  be  impaired,  in  other  words, 
by “outside the program” pro-abortion speech. The purpose
of the limitation was to prevent Government funding from
providing  the  means  of  pro-abortion  propaganda,  which