Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-277_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 23.0

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

17 

Opinion of the Court 

Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, 
Inc., 547 U. S. 47 (2006) (FAIR), the Court reiterated that a
First  Amendment  claim  will  not  succeed  when  the  entity
objecting to hosting third-party speech is not itself engaged
in expression.  The statute at issue required law schools to
allow  the  military  to  participate  in  on-campus  recruiting. 
The Court held that the schools had no First Amendment 
right to exclude the military based on its hiring policies, be-
cause the schools “are not speaking when they host inter-
views.”  Id., at 64.  Or stated again, with reference to the
just-described precedents: Because a “law school’s recruit-
ing services lack the expressive quality of a parade, a news-
letter, or the editorial page of a newspaper,”  the required
“accommodation of a military recruiter[ ]” did not “interfere 
with any message of the school.”  Ibid. 

That is a slew of individual cases, so consider three gen-
eral points to wrap up.  Not coincidentally, they will figure
in the upcoming discussion of the First Amendment prob-
lems  the  statutes  at  issue  here  likely  present  as  to  Face-
book’s News Feed and similar products. 

First, the First Amendment offers protection when an en-
tity  engaging  in  expressive  activity,  including  compiling 
and  curating  others’  speech,  is  directed  to  accommodate 
messages it would prefer to exclude.  “[T]he editorial func-
tion itself is an aspect of speech.”  Denver Area Ed. Telecom-
munications  Consortium,  Inc.  v.  FCC,  518  U. S.  727,  737 
(1996) (plurality opinion).  Or said just a bit differently: An 
entity “exercis[ing] editorial discretion in the selection and
presentation”  of  content  is  “engage[d]  in  speech  activity.” 
Arkansas Ed. Television Comm’n v. Forbes, 523 U. S. 666, 
674  (1998).  And  that  is  as  true  when  the  content  comes 
from third parties as when it does not.  (Again, think of a 
newspaper opinion page or, if you prefer, a parade.)  Decid-
ing on the third-party speech that will be included in or ex-
cluded  from  a  compilation—and  then  organizing  and  pre-
senting  the  included  items—is  expressive  activity  of  its