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524US2

Unit: $U95

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NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR ARTS v. FINLEY

Souter, J., dissenting

But even if I found the Court’s view of “consideration”
plausible, that would make no difference at all on the ques-
tion of constitutionality. What if the statute required a
panel to apply criteria “taking into consideration the central-
ity of Christianity to the American cultural experience,” or
“taking into consideration whether the artist is a commu-
nist,” or “taking into consideration the political message con-
veyed by the art,” or even “taking into consideration the
superiority of the white race”? Would the Court hold these
considerations facially constitutional, merely because the
statute had no requirement to give them any particular,
much less controlling, weight?
In such in-
stances, the Court would hold that the First Amendment
bars the government from considering viewpoint when it de-
cides whether to subsidize private speech, and a statute that
mandates the consideration of viewpoint is quite obviously
unconstitutional. Cf. Dawson v. Delaware, 503 U. S. 159,
167 (1992) (holding that the First Amendment forbids reli-
ance on a defendant’s abstract beliefs at sentencing, even if
they are considered as one factor among many); Ozonoff v.
Berzak, 744 F. 2d 224, 233 (CA1 1984) (Breyer, J.) (holding
that an Executive Order which provided that a person’s
political associations “may be considered” in determining
security clearance violated the First Amendment). Sec-
tion 954(d)(1) is just such a statute.

I assume not.

III

A second basic strand in the Court’s treatment of today’s
question, see ante, at 585–587, and the heart of Justice
Scalia’s, see ante, at 595–599, in effect assume that whether
or not the statute mandates viewpoint discrimination, there
is no constitutional issue here because government art subsi-
dies fall within a zone of activity free from First Amendment
restraints. The Government calls attention to the roles of
government-as-speaker and government-as-buyer, in which
the government is of course entitled to engage in view-