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10  AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY FOUNDATION v. BONTA 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

“resolution  of  conflicts  between  generally  applicable  laws 
and . . . First Amendment rights”).

Compare, for instance, the Court’s approaches in Shelton 
v. Tucker and Doe v. Reed.  At issue in Shelton was an Ar-
kansas  statute  passed  in  1958  that  compelled  all  public
school teachers, as a condition of employment, to submit an-
nually a list of every organization to which they belonged or 
regularly  contributed.  364  U. S.,  at  480–481.    The  Court 
held that the disclosure requirement “comprehensive[ly] in-
terfere[d] with associational freedom,” because record evi-
dence demonstrated a significant risk that the information
would be publicly disclosed, and such disclosure could lead 
to public pressure on school boards “to discharge teachers
who belong to unpopular or minority organizations.”  Id., at 
486–487, 490.  Arkansas’s statute did not require that the 
information  remain  confidential;  each  school  board  was 
“free  to  deal  with  the  information  as  it  wishe[d].”    Id.,  at 
486.  Indeed, “a witness who was a member of the Capital
Citizens[’] Council” (an organization dedicated to resisting
school  integration)3  “testified  that  his  group  intended  to 
gain access” to the teachers’ affidavits “with a view to elim-
inating from the school system persons who supported or-
ganizations unpopular with the group.”  Ibid., n. 7.  Moreo-
ver, a starkly asymmetric power dynamic existed between 
teachers, who were “hired on a year-to-year basis,” and the 
hiring  authorities  to  whom  their  membership  lists  were
submitted.  Id.,  at  482.  The  Arkansas  Legislature  had
made no secret of its desire for teachers’ disclosures to be 
used for hiring and firing decisions.  One year after enacting 
the disclosure requirement at issue in Shelton, the legisla-
ture  enacted  another  provision  that  made  it  outright  un-
lawful for state governmental bodies to employ members of 
the NAACP.  Shelton v. McKinley, 174 F. Supp. 351, 353– 

—————— 

3 See Hagley, Massive Resistance—The Rhetoric and the Reality, 27 

N. M. L. Rev. 167, 203 (1997).