Opinion ID: 6112665
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Plaintiﬀs’ First Amendment Theory

Text: Plaintiﬀs’ core claim is under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. They contend that excluding them from the Program penalizes them for engaging in expressive activity protected by the First Amendment. See generally Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S. 560, 565–66 (1991) (plurality opinion) (treating nude dancing as “marginally” within outer perimeters of First Amendment protection; aﬃrming local ban on completely nude dancing). The problem with plaintiﬀs’ First Amendment claim and the preliminary injunction here is that Congress is not trying to regulate or suppress plaintiﬀs’ adult entertainment. It has simply chosen not to subsidize it. Such selective, categorical exclusions from a government subsidy do not oﬀend the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has repeatedly drawn a line between government regulation of speech, on one hand, and government subsidy of speech, on the other. Its decisions show that the government is not required to subsidize activity simply because the activity is protected by the First Amendment. E.g., Ysursa v. Pocatello Education Ass’n, 555 U.S. 353, 358–59 (2009) (“While in some contexts the government must accommodate expression, it is not required to assist others in funding the expression of particular ideas, including political ones;” state could choose not to carry out payroll deductions No. 21-2589 7 for political contributions to labor unions); Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 193 (1991) (“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 which seeks to deal with the problem in another way. In so doing, the Government has not discriminated on the basis of viewpoint; it has merely chosen to fund one activity to the exclusion of the other.”); Regan v. Taxation With Representation, 461 U.S. 540, 549 (1983) (“[A] legislature’s decision not to subsidize the exercise of a fundamental right does not infringe the right….”); accord, e.g., Wisconsin Education Ass’n Council v. Walker, 705 F.3d 640, 646–47 (7th Cir. 2013). To avoid the controlling line of subsidy cases, plaintiﬀs focus on language in Regan suggesting that a selective subsidy program may violate the First Amendment if it is “aim[ed] at the suppression of dangerous ideas.” 461 U.S. at 548. To take an easy example of such viewpoint discrimination, even if Congress can choose to exclude political lobbyists entirely from the Program’s subsidies, it could not choose to subsidize Democratic lobbyists while excluding Republicans. Plaintiﬀs’ theory here is that Congress chose to exclude their businesses from the subsidy program because it deemed their “ideas” about sexuality to be dangerous. This theory fails to distinguish between government suppression of protected activity and denial of a subsidy. Plaintiﬀs’ theory seems to be that the denial of a subsidy is itself the act of suppression. That theory loses sight of the diﬀerence between regulation and denial of a subsidy—the diﬀerence at the heart of Regan, Rust, Ysursa, and the rest of the selectivesubsidy line of cases. The only sign we see here of a supposed 8 No. 21-2589 eﬀort to “suppress” is the choice not to subsidize. Whatever door Regan left open—and as far as we can tell, the Supreme Court has never struck down a denial of subsidy on this ground—it surely requires something more, like viewpoint discrimination, than denial of the subsidy itself. See Wisconsin Education Ass’n, 705 F.3d at 650–52, and id. at 664–70 (Hamilton, J., dissenting in relevant part) (majority and dissent debating evidence of viewpoint discrimination in state’s choice to subsidize payroll deductions for dues for some public employee unions but not others).