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529US1

Unit: $U39

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BOARD OF REGENTS OF UNIV. OF WIS. SYSTEM
v. SOUTHWORTH
Opinion of the Court

analogy. This is true even though the student activities
fund is not a public forum in the traditional sense of the term
and despite the circumstance that those cases most often in-
volve a demand for access, not a claim to be exempt from
supporting speech. See, e. g., Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Mo-
riches Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. 384 (1993); Widmar
v. Vincent, 454 U. S. 263 (1981). The standard of viewpoint
neutrality found in the public forum cases provides the
standard we ﬁnd controlling. We decide that the viewpoint
neutrality requirement of the University program is in gen-
eral sufﬁcient to protect the rights of the objecting students.
The student referendum aspect of the program for funding
speech and expressive activities, however, appears to be in-
consistent with the viewpoint neutrality requirement.

We must begin by recognizing that the complaining stu-
dents are being required to pay fees which are subsidies for
speech they ﬁnd objectionable, even offensive. The Abood
and Keller cases, then, provide the beginning point for our
analysis. Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U. S. 209 (1977);
Keller v. State Bar of Cal., 496 U. S. 1 (1990). While those
precedents identify the interests of the protesting students,
the means of implementing First Amendment protections
adopted in those decisions are neither applicable nor work-
able in the context of extracurricular student speech at a
university.

In Abood, some nonunion public school teachers challenged
an agreement requiring them, as a condition of their employ-
ment, to pay a service fee equal in amount to union dues.
431 U. S., at 211–212. The objecting teachers alleged that
the union’s use of their fees to engage in political speech
violated their freedom of association guaranteed by the First
Id., at 213. The Court
and Fourteenth Amendments.
agreed and held that any objecting teacher could “prevent
the Union’s spending a part of their required service fees to
contribute to political candidates and to express political
views unrelated to its duties as exclusive bargaining repre-