Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 308.0

529US1

Unit: $U39

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

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

233

Opinion of the Court

The University may determine that its mission is well
served if students have the means to engage in dynamic dis-
cussions of philosophical, religious, scientiﬁc, social, and po-
litical subjects in their extracurricular campus life outside
the lecture hall.
If the University reaches this conclusion,
it is entitled to impose a mandatory fee to sustain an open
dialogue to these ends.

The University must provide some protection to its stu-
dents’ First Amendment interests, however. The proper
measure, and the principal standard of protection for object-
ing students, we conclude, is the requirement of viewpoint
neutrality in the allocation of funding support. Viewpoint
neutrality was the obligation to which we gave substance in
Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S.
819 (1995). There the University of Virginia feared that any
association with a student newspaper advancing religious
viewpoints would violate the Establishment Clause. We re-
jected the argument, holding that the school’s adherence to
a rule of viewpoint neutrality in administering its student
fee program would prevent “any mistaken impression that
Id., at
the student newspapers speak for the University.”
841. While Rosenberger was concerned with the rights a
student has to use an extracurricular speech program al-
ready in place, today’s case considers the antecedent ques-
tion, acknowledged but unresolved in Rosenberger: whether
a public university may require its students to pay a fee
which creates the mechanism for the extracurricular speech
in the ﬁrst instance. When a university requires its stu-
dents to pay fees to support the extracurricular speech of
other students, all in the interest of open discussion, it may
not prefer some viewpoints to others. There is symmetry
then in our holding here and in Rosenberger: Viewpoint neu-
trality is the justiﬁcation for requiring the student to pay
the fee in the ﬁrst instance and for ensuring the integrity of
the program’s operation once the funds have been collected.
We conclude that the University of Wisconsin may sustain