Opinion ID: 1087888
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: compelled affirmation of belief.

Text: It is argued that the requirement of Bar dues payments which may be spent for legislative recommendations which the payor opposes amounts to a compelled affirmation of belief of the sort this Court struck down in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624. While I agree that the rationale of Barnette is relevant, I do not think that it is in any sense controlling in the present case. Mr. Justice Jackson, writing for the Court in Barnette, did not view the issue as turning merely on one's possession of particular religious views or the sincerity with which they are held. 319 U. S., at 634. The holding of Barnette was that, no matter how strong or weak such beliefs might be, the Legislature of West Virginia was not free to require as concrete and intimate an expression of belief in any cause as that involved in a compulsory pledge of allegiance. It is in this light that one must assess the contention that, Compelling a man by law to pay his money to elect candidates or advocate laws or doctrines he is against differs only in degree, if at all, from compelling him by law to speak for a candidate, a party, or a cause he is against ( ante, p. 788). One could as well say that the same mere difference in degree distinguishes the Barnette flag salute situation from a taxpayer's objections to the views a government agency presents, at public expense, to Congress. What seems to me obvious is the large difference in degree between, on the one hand, being compelled to raise one's hand and recite a belief as one's own, and, on the other, being compelled to contribute dues to a bar association fund which is to be used in part to promote the expression of views in the name of the organization (not in the name of the dues payor), which views when adopted may turn out to be contrary to the views of the dues payor. I think this is a situation where the difference in degree is so great as to amount to a difference in substance. In Barnette there was a governmental purpose of requiring expression of a view in order to encourage adoption of that view, much the same as when a school teacher requires a student to write a message of self-correction on the blackboard one hundred times. In the present case there is no indication of a governmental purpose to further the expression of any particular view. More than that, the State Bar's purpose of furthering expression of views is unconnected with any desire to induce belief or conviction by the device of forcing a person to identify himself with the expression of such views. True, purpose may not be controlling when the identification is intimate between the person who wishes to remain silent and the beliefs foisted upon him. But no such situation exists here where the connection between the payment of an individual's dues and the views to which he objects is factually so remote. Surely the Wisconsin Supreme Court is right when it says that petitioner can be expected to realize that everyone understands or should understand that the views expressed are those of the State Bar as an entity separate and distinct from each individual. 5 Wis. 2d, at 623, 93 N. W. 2d, at 603. Indeed, I think the extreme difficulty the Court encounters in the Street case ( ante, p. 740) in finding a mechanism for reimbursing dissident union members for their share of political expenditures is wholly occasioned by, and is indicative of, the many steps of changed possession, ownership, and control of dues receipts and the multiple stages of decision making which separate the dues payor from the political expenditure of some part of his dues. I think these many steps and stages reflect as well upon whether there is an identification of dues payor and expenditure so intimate as to amount to a compelled affirmation. Surely if this Court in Street can only with great difficultyif at allidentify the contributions of particular union members with the union's political expenditures, we should pause before assuming that particular Bar members can sensibly hear their own voices when the State Bar speaks as an organization. Mr. Justice Cardozo, writing for himself, Mr. Justice Brandeis, and Mr. Justice Stone in Hamilton v. Regents, 293 U. S. 245, 265, thought that the remoteness of the connection between a conscientious objection to war and the study of military science was in itself sufficient to make untenable a claim that requiring this study in state universities amounted to a state establishment of religion. These Justices thought the case even clearer when all that was involved was a contribution of money: Manifestly a different doctrine would carry us to lengths that have never yet been dreamed of. The conscientious objector, if his liberties were to be thus extended, might refuse to contribute taxes in furtherance of a war . . . or in furtherance of any other end condemned by his conscience as irreligious or immoral. The right of private judgment has never yet been so exalted above the powers and the compulsion of the agencies of government. Hamilton v. Regents, 293 U. S. 245, 268. Nor do I now believe that a state taxpayer could object on Fourteenth Amendment grounds to the use of his money for school textbooks or instruction which he finds intellectually repulsive, nor for the mere purchase of a flag for the school. In the present case appellant is simply required to pay dues into the general funds of the State Bar. I do not think a subsequent decision by the representatives of the majority of the bar members to devote some part of the organization's funds to the furtherance of a legislative proposal so identifies the individual payor of dues with the belief expressed that we are in the Barnette realm of asserted power to force an American citizen publicly to profess any statement of belief or to engage in any ceremony of assent to one. . . . 319 U. S., at 634. It seems to me evident that the actual core of appellant's complaint as to compelled affirmation is not the identification with causes to which he objects that might arise from some conceivable tracing of the use of his dues in their support, but is his forced association with the Integrated Bar. That, however, is a bridge which, beyond all doubt and any protestations now made to the contrary, we crossed in the Hanson case. I can see no way to uncross it without overruling Hanson. Certainly it cannot be done by declaring as a rule of law that lawyers feel more strongly about the identification of their names with proposals for law reform than union members feel about the identification of their names with collective bargaining demands declared on the radio, in picket signs, and on handbills.