Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 314.0

529US1

Unit: $U39

[09-26-01 13:21:31] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 217 (2000)

239

Souter, J., concurring in judgment

dom and autonomy that bars legislatures (and courts) from
imposing conditions on the spectrum of subjects taught and
viewpoints expressed in college teaching (as the majority
recognizes, ante, at 232), we have never held that universi-
ties lie entirely beyond the reach of students’ First Amend-
ment rights.5 Thus our prior cases do not go so far as to
control the result in this one, and going beyond those cases
would be out of order, simply because the University has
not litigated on grounds of academic freedom. As to that
freedom and university autonomy, then, it is enough to say
that protecting a university’s discretion to shape its educa-
tional mission may prove to be an important consideration
in First Amendment analysis of objections to student fees.
Sweezy, supra, at 262–264 (Frankfurter, J., concurring in re-
sult); Ewing, supra, at 226, n. 12.

The second avenue for addressing Southworth’s claim to a
pro rata refund or the total abolition of the student activity
fee is to see how closely the circumstances here resemble
instances of governmental speech mandates found to require
relief. As a threshold matter, it is plain that this case falls
far aﬁeld of those involving compelled or controlled speech,
apart from subsidy schemes.
Indirectly transmitting a frac-
tion of a student activity fee to an organization with an offen-
sive message is in no sense equivalent to restricting or modi-
fying the message a student wishes to express. Cf. Hurley
v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Bos-
ton, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 572–574 (1995). Nor does it require
an individual to bear an offensive statement personally, as in
Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705, 707 (1977), let alone to
afﬁrm a moral or political commitment, as in West Virginia
Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 626–629 (1943).
In
each of these cases, the government was imposing far more
directly and offensively on an objecting individual than col-

5 Indeed, acceptance of the most general statement of academic freedom
(as in the South African manifesto quoted by Justice Frankfurter) might
be thought even to sanction student speech codes in public universities.