Opinion ID: 118240
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: What The Statute Says Is Constitutional

Text: The Court devotes so much of its opinion to explaining why this statute means something other than what it says that it neglects to cite the constitutional text governing our analysis. The First Amendment reads: Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech. U. S. Const., Amdt. 1 (emphasis added). To abridge is to contract, to diminish; to deprive of. T. Sheridan, A Complete Dictionary of the English Language (6th ed. 1796). With the enactment of § 954(d)(1), Congress did not abridge the speech of those who disdain the beliefs and values of the American public, nor did it abridge indecent speech. Those who wish to create indecent and disrespectful art are as unconstrained now as they were before the enactment of this statute. Avant-garde artistes such as respondents remain entirely free to épater les bourgeois; [2] they are merely deprived of the additional satisfaction of having the bourgeoisie taxed to pay for it. It is preposterous to equate the denial of taxpayer subsidy with measures ` aimed at the suppression of dangerous ideas.`  Regan v. Taxation with Representation of Wash., 461 U. S. 540, 550 (1983) (emphasis added) (quoting Cammarano v. United States, 358 U. S. 498, 513 (1959), in turn quoting Speiser v . Randall, 357 U. S. 513, 519 (1958)). The reason that denial of participation in a tax exemption or other subsidy scheme does not necessarily `infringe' a fundamental right is thatunlike direct restriction or prohibitionsuch a denial does not, as a general rule, have any significant coercive effect. Arkansas Writers' Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U. S. 221, 237 (1987) (Scalia, J., dissenting). One might contend, I suppose, that a threat of rejection by the only available source of free money would constitute coercion and hence abridgment within the meaning of the First Amendment. Cf. Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U. S. 455, 465 (1973). I would not agree with such a contention, which would make the NEA the mandatory patron of all art too indecent, too disrespectful, or even too kitsch to attract private support. But even if one accepts the contention, it would have no application here. The NEA is far from the sole source of funding for arteven indecent, disrespectful, or just plain bad art. Accordingly, the Government may earmark NEA funds for projects it deems to be in the public interest without thereby abridging speech. Regan v. Taxation with Representation of Wash., supra, at 549. Section 954(d)(1) is no more discriminatory, and no less constitutional, than virtually every other piece of funding legislation enacted by Congress. The Government can, without violating the Constitution, selectively fund a program to encourage certain activities it believes to be in the public interest, without at the same time funding an alternative program . . . . Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173, 193 (1991). As we noted in Rust, when Congress chose to establish the National Endowment for Democracy it was not constitutionally required to fund programs encouraging competing philosophies of governmentan example of funding discrimination that cuts much closer than this one to the core of political speech which is the primary concern of the First Amendment. See id. , at 194. It takes a particularly high degree of chutzpah for the NEA to contradict this proposition, since the agency itself discriminatesand is required by law to discriminatein favor of artistic (as opposed to scientific, or political, or theological) expression. Not all the common folk, or even all great minds, for that matter, think that is a good idea. In 1800, when John Marshall told John Adams that a recent immigration of Frenchmen would include talented artists, Adams denounced all Frenchmen, but most especially `schoolmasters, painters, poets, &C.' He warned Marshall that the fine arts were like germs that infected healthy constitutions. J. Ellis, After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture 36 (1979). Surely the NEA itself is nothing less than an institutionalized discrimination against that point of view. Nonetheless, it is constitutional, as is the congressional determination to favor decency and respect for beliefs and values over the opposite because such favoritism does not abridge anyone's freedom of speech. Respondents, relying on Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819, 833 (1995), argue that viewpoint-based discrimination is impermissible unless the government is the speaker or the government is disburs[ing] public funds to private entities to convey a governmental message. Ibid. It is impossible to imagine why that should be so; one would think that directly involving the government itself in the viewpoint discrimination (if it is unconstitutional) would make the situation even worse. Respondents are mistaken. It is the very business of government to favor and disfavor points of view on (in modern times, at least) innumerable subjectswhich is the main reason we have decided to elect those who run the government, rather than save money by making their posts hereditary. And it makes not a bit of difference, insofar as either common sense or the Constitution is concerned, whether these officials further their (and, in a democracy, our) favored point of view by achieving it directly (having government-employed artists paint pictures, for example, or government-employed doctors perform abortions); or by advocating it officially (establishing an Office of Art Appreciation, for example, or an Office of Voluntary Population Control); or by giving money to others who achieve or advocate it (funding private art classes, for example, or Planned Parenthood). [3] None of this has anything to do with abridging anyone's speech. Rosenberger, as the Court explains, ante, at 586, found the viewpoint discrimination unconstitutional, not because funding of private speech was involved, but because the government had established a limited public forumto which the NEA's granting of highly selective (if not highly discriminating) awards bears no resemblance. The nub of the difference between me and the Court is that I regard the distinction between abridging speech and funding it as a fundamental divide, on this side of which the First Amendment is inapplicable. The Court, by contrast, seems to believe that the First Amendment, despite its words, has some ineffable effect upon funding, imposing constraints of an indeterminate nature which it announces (without troubling to enunciate any particular test) are not violated by the statute hereor, more accurately, are not violated by the quite different, emasculated statute that it imagines. [T]he Government, it says, may allocate competitive funding according to criteria that would be impermissible were direct regulation of speech or a criminal penalty at stake, ante, at 587-588. The Government, I think, may allocate both competitive and noncompetitive funding ad libitum, insofar as the First Amendment is concerned. Finally, what is true of the First Amendment is also true of the constitutional rule against vague legislation: it has no application to funding. Insofar as it bears upon First Amendment concerns, the vagueness doctrine addresses the problems that arise from government regulation of expressive conduct, see Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U. S. 104, 108-109 (1972), not government grant programs. In the former context, vagueness produces an abridgment of lawful speech; in the latter it produces, at worst, a waste of money. I cannot refrain from observing, however, that if the vagueness doctrine were applicable, the agency charged with making grants under a statutory standard of artistic excellenceand which has itself thought that standard met by everything from the playing of Beethoven to a depiction of a crucifix immersed in urinewould be of more dubious constitutional validity than the decency and respect limitations that respondents (who demand to be judged on the same strict standard of artistic excellence) have the humorlessness to call too vague.