Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 645

524US2

Unit: $U95

[09-06-00 18:40:44] PAGES PGT: OPIN

600

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR ARTS v. FINLEY

Souter, J., dissenting

a cruciﬁx immersed in urine—would be of more dubious con-
stitutional validity than the “decency” and “respect” limi-
tations that respondents (who demand to be judged on
the same strict standard of “artistic excellence”) have the
humorlessness to call too vague.

*

*

*

In its laudatory description of the accomplishments of the
NEA, ante, at 574, the Court notes with satisfaction that
“only a handful of the agency’s roughly 100,000 awards have
generated formal complaints,” ibid. The Congress that felt
it necessary to enact § 954(d)(1) evidently thought it much
more noteworthy that any money exacted from American
taxpayers had been used to produce a cruciﬁx immersed in
urine or a display of homoerotic photographs.
It is no secret
that the provision was prompted by, and directed at, the
Instead of banning
funding of such offensive productions.
the funding of such productions absolutely, which I think
would have been entirely constitutional, Congress took the
lesser step of requiring them to be disfavored in the evalua-
tion of grant applications. The Court’s opinion today ren-
ders even that lesser step a nullity. For that reason, I con-
cur only in the judgment.

Justice Souter, dissenting.
The question here is whether the italicized segment of this
statute is unconstitutional on its face: “[A]rtistic excellence
and artistic merit are the criteria by which applications [for
grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)]
are judged, taking into consideration general standards of
decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the
20 U. S. C. § 954(d) (emphasis added).
American public.”
It is.

The decency and respect proviso mandates viewpoint-
based decisions in the disbursement of Government subsi-
dies, and the Government has wholly failed to explain why
the statute should be afforded an exemption from the funda-