Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 315

529US1

Unit: $U39

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BOARD OF REGENTS OF UNIV. OF WIS. SYSTEM
v. SOUTHWORTH
Souter, J., concurring in judgment

lecting the fee that indirectly funds the jumble of other
speakers’ messages in this case.

Next, I agree with the majority that the Abood and Keller
line of cases does not control the remedy here, the situation
of the students being signiﬁcantly different from that of
union or bar association members. Ante, at 230; see Abood
v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U. S. 209 (1977); Keller v. State Bar
of Cal., 496 U. S. 1 (1990). First, the relationship between
the fee payer and the ultimately objectionable expression is
far more attenuated.
In the union and bar association cases,
an individual was required to join or at least drop money in
the coffers of the very organization promoting messages sub-
ject to objection. Abood, supra, at 211–213, 215; Keller,
supra, at 13–14. The connection between the forced con-
tributor and the ultimate message was as direct as the unme-
diated contribution to the organization doing the speaking.
The student contributor, however, has to fund only a distrib-
uting agency having itself no social, political, or ideological
character and itself engaging (as all parties agree) in no ex-
pression of any distinct message.6 App. 14–15, 34, 39, 41.
Indeed, the disbursements, varying from year to year, are as
likely as not to fund an organization that disputes the very
message an individual student ﬁnds exceptionable.
Id., at
39. Thus, the clear connection between fee payer and offen-
sive speech that loomed large in our decisions in the union
and bar cases is simply not evident here.

Second, Southworth’s objection has less force than it might
otherwise carry because the challenged fees support a gov-

6 I have noted in other contexts that the act of funding itself may have
a communicative element, see Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ.
of Va., 515 U. S. 819, 892–893, n. 11 (1995) (dissenting opinion); National
Endowment for Arts v. Finley, 524 U. S. 569, 611, n. 6 (1998) (dissenting
opinion), but there is no allegation that such general expression is objec-
tionable here, nor is it clear that such a claim necessarily raises substantial
First Amendment concerns in light of the speech promoting and educa-
tional aspects of this expression. Cf. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 92–93
(1976) (per curiam). See also infra this page and 241–243.