Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 667

524US2

Unit: $U95

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NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR ARTS v. FINLEY

Souter, J., dissenting

States. Because the NEA provides much of its support
with conditions that require matching or co-funding
from private sources, the NEA’s funding involvement in
a project necessarily has a multiplier effect in the com-
petitive market for funding of artistic endeavors. . . .
[In addition,] most non-federal funding sources regard
the NEA award as an imprimatur that signiﬁes the
recipient’s artistic merit and value. NEA grants lend
prestige and legitimacy to projects and are therefore
critical to the ability of artists and companies to attract
non-federal funding sources. Grant applicants rely on
the NEA well beyond the dollar value of any particular
grant.” Bella Lewitzky Dance Foundation v. Frohn-
mayer, 754 F. Supp. 774, 783 (CD Cal. 1991) (footnote
and internal quotation marks omitted).16

Since the decency and respect proviso of § 954(d)(1) is sub-
stantially overbroad and carries with it a signiﬁcant power
to chill artistic production and display, it should be struck
down on its face.17

16 See also, e. g., 131 Cong. Rec. 24808 (1985) (“[S]upport from the En-
dowmen[t] has always represented a ‘Good Housekeeping Seal’ of approval
which has helped grantees generate non-Federal dollars for projects and
productions”).

17 I agree with the Court that § 954(d) is not unconstitutionally vague.
Any chilling that results from imprecision in the drafting of standards
(such as “artistic excellence and artistic merit”) by which the Government
awards scarce grants and scholarships is an inevitable and permissible
consequence of distributing prizes on the basis of criteria dealing with
a subject that deﬁes exactness. The necessary imprecision of artistic-
merit-based criteria justiﬁes tolerating a degree of vagueness that might
be intolerable when applying the First Amendment to attempts to regu-
late political discussion. Cf. Arkansas Ed. Television Comm’n v. Forbes,
523 U. S. 666, 694–695 (1998) (Stevens, J., dissenting). My problem is
not with the chilling that may naturally result from necessarily open
standards;
it is with the unacceptable chilling of “dangerous ideas,”
Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513, 519 (1958), that naturally results from
explicitly viewpoint-based standards.