Opinion ID: 220365
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Policy Requirement Likely Violates the First Amendment

Text: The Spending Clause of the Constitution empowers Congress to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1. This provision allows Congress to condition[] [the] receipt of federal moneys upon compliance by the recipient with federal statutory and administrative directives. South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203, 206, 107 S.Ct. 2793, 97 L.Ed.2d 171 (1987) (quoting Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 474, 100 S.Ct. 2758, 65 L.Ed.2d 902 (1980)). It is well settled that Congress is entitled to further policy goals indirectly through its spending power that it might not be able to achieve by direct regulation. See id. at 207, 107 S.Ct. 2793 ([O]bjectives not thought to be within Article I's enumerated legislative fields may nevertheless be attained through the use of the spending power and the conditional grant of federal funds. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). Congress's power under the Spending Clause is broad, as the constitutional limitations on Congress when exercising its spending power are less exacting than those on its authority to regulate directly. Id. at 209, 107 S.Ct. 2793. Defendants contend that because the Leadership Act is a Spending Clause enactment, and Plaintiffs are free to decline funding if they do not wish to comply with its conditions, the Policy Requirement should be subjected to only minimal scrutiny under Dole. But Congress's spending power, while broad, is not unlimited, and other constitutional provisions may provide an independent bar to the conditional grant of federal funds. Pursuant to this unconstitutional conditions doctrine, as it has come to be known, the government may not place a condition on the receipt of a benefit or subsidy that infringes upon the recipient's constitutionally protected rights, even if the government has no obligation to offer the benefit in the first instance. See Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 597, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972) ([E]ven though a person has no `right' to a valuable governmental benefit and even though the government may deny him the benefit for any number of reasons, there are some reasons upon which the government may not rely. It may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected interests  especially, his interest in freedom of speech.). As the Supreme Court recently reiterated, the government may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected ... freedom of speech even if he has no entitlement to that benefit. Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U.S. 47, 59, 126 S.Ct. 1297, 164 L.Ed.2d 156 (2006) ( FAIR ) (internal quotation marks omitted). This tension between the breadth of Congress's spending power on one hand and the principle that a condition on the receipt of federal funds may not infringe upon the recipient's First Amendment rights on the other has given rise to three seminal Supreme Court decisions and several related cases from our Circuit. The Supreme Court cases are Regan v. Taxation With Representation, 461 U.S. 540, 103 S.Ct. 1997, 76 L.Ed.2d 129 (1983), FCC v. League of Women Voters of California, 468 U.S. 364, 104 S.Ct. 3106, 82 L.Ed.2d 278 (1984), and Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 111 S.Ct. 1759, 114 L.Ed.2d 233 (1991). Our cases include a series of decisions concerning conditions imposed upon recipients of funding from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC): Velazquez v. Legal Services Corp., 164 F.3d 757 (2d Cir.1999) ( Velazquez I ), Legal Services Corp. v. Velazquez, 531 U.S. 533, 121 S.Ct. 1043, 149 L.Ed.2d 63 (2001) ( Velazquez II ), and Brooklyn Legal Services Corp. v. Legal Services Corp., 462 F.3d 219 (2d Cir.2006) ( BLS ). In Regan, plaintiff Taxation With Representation (TWR), a nonprofit lobbying corporation, challenged a statute that denied tax deductions to organizations that engaged in substantial lobbying. 461 U.S. at 541, 544, 103 S.Ct. 1997; see 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3). TWR argued that the prohibition against substantial lobbying by § 501(c)(3) organizations imposed an unconstitutional condition on the receipt of tax-deductible contributions. The Supreme Court disagreed, concluding that TWR remained free to receive deductible contributions to support its nonlobbying activity, and could create a separate, tax-exempt affiliate under § 501(c)(4) to pursue its lobbying activity. Id. at 544-45, 103 S.Ct. 1997. Given that alternative, the Court concluded that Congress ha[d] not infringed any First Amendment rights or regulated any First Amendment activity, but simply chosen not to pay for TWR's lobbying. Id. at 546, 103 S.Ct. 1997. In a concurring opinion, Justice Blackmun emphasized the saving effect of § 501(c)(4), stating his view that § 501(c)(3) alone would be constitutional[ly] defect[ive], but that [a] § 501(c)(3) organization's right to speak is not infringed, because it is free to [lobby] through its § 501(c)(4) affiliate without losing tax benefits for its nonlobbying activities. Id. at 552-53, 103 S.Ct. 1997 (Blackmun, J., concurring). The following term, the Supreme Court decided League of Women Voters, which involved a First Amendment challenge to a provision in the Public Broadcasting Act that prohibited stations receiving federal funds from editorializing. 468 U.S. at 367, 104 S.Ct. 3106. The Court struck down the provision, troubled by the fact that it barred [a grantee] from using even wholly private funds to finance its editorial activity. Id. at 400, 104 S.Ct. 3106 (stating that unlike the situation faced by [TWR], a [station] that receives only 1% of its overall income from [federal] grants is barred absolutely from all editorializing). The Court noted, however, that if recipients were permitted to establish `affiliate' organizations which could then use the station's facilities to editorialize with nonfederal funds, such a statutory mechanism would plainly be valid under the reasoning of [ Regan ], as the recipient would be free, in the same way that [TWR] was free, to make known its views on matters of public importance through its nonfederally funded, editorializing affiliate without losing federal grants for its noneditorializing broadcast activities. Id. The Supreme Court elaborated on these themes in Rust, which involved a facial challenge to HHS regulations implementing Title X of the Public Health Service Act. 500 U.S. at 177-78, 111 S.Ct. 1759. Title X authorizes HHS to make grants to organizations to help them run family planning projects, but provides that no Title X funds shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning. Id. at 178, 111 S.Ct. 1759 (quoting 42 U.S.C. §§ 300(a), 300a-6). The HHS regulations prohibited Title X projects from providing abortion counseling or referrals, or engaging in any activities that encourage, promote, or advocate abortion as a method of family planning. Id. at 179-80, 111 S.Ct. 1759. However, the regulations allowed grantees to engage in abortion-related activities as long as their Title X projects maintained objective integrity and independence from such activities  a determination to be made by HHS based on factors such as the existence of separate personnel, and the degree of separation between the Title X project and facilities used for restricted activities. Id. at 180-81, 111 S.Ct. 1759 (quoting 42 C.F.R. § 59.9 (1989)). The Rust plaintiffs argued that the regulations violated the First Amendment because they discriminat[ed] based on viewpoint [by] prohibit[ing] all discussion about abortion as a lawful option, and because they conditioned the receipt of Title X funds on relinquishing the right to engage in abortion-related speech. Id. at 192, 196, 111 S.Ct. 1759 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Supreme Court disagreed, concluding that the Government has not discriminated on the basis of viewpoint; it has merely chosen to fund one activity to the exclusion of the other. Id. at 193, 111 S.Ct. 1759 (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.). It held that the regulations do not force the Title X grantee to give up abortion-related speech, but merely require that the grantee keep such activities separate and distinct from Title X activities. Id. at 196, 111 S.Ct. 1759. The Court emphasized that this was unlike the funding condition found unconstitutional in League of Women Voters, where the Government ha[d] placed [the] condition on the recipient of the subsidy rather than on a particular program or service. Id. at 197, 111 S.Ct. 1759 (emphasis in original). We turn now to three decisions of this Court arising under the Legal Services Corporation Act of 1974, pursuant to which the LSC makes grants to local organizations that provide free legal assistance to indigent clients. Velazquez I, 164 F.3d at 759. In 1996, Congress passed legislation barring LSC grants to entities that engage in certain activities, such as lobbying or class actions, thereby restrict[ing] grantees' use of non-federal and federal funds alike. Id. at 760. In order to cure the constitutional infirmities of the 1996 restrictions, LSC issued program integrity regulations, modeled after those upheld in Rust, allowing grantees to affiliate with organizations that did engage in prohibited activities, as long as the entities maintained adequate physical and financial separation. Id. at 761-62. In Velazquez I, we considered a facial challenge to the 1996 statute and LSC regulations, which the plaintiffs argued impermissibly burden[ed] grantees' exercise of First Amendment activities, and constitut[ed] a viewpoint-based restriction on expression. Id. at 763. Judge Leval, writing for the majority, synthesized Regan, League of Women Voters, and Rust as establishing that, in appropriate circumstances, Congress may burden the First Amendment rights of recipients of government benefits if the recipients are left with adequate alternative channels for protected expression. Id. at 766. The facial challenge therefore failed, because although the affiliate option might, as applied to some LSC grantees, prove unduly burdensome, there was no reason to think this would be true for all grantees. Id. at 767. However, one provision in the 1996 statute, which prohibited grantees from representing clients challenging existing welfare law, was held invalid as impermissible viewpoint discrimination. Id. at 769-72. The Supreme Court affirmed our invalidation of that viewpoint-based restriction in Velazquez II. 531 U.S. at 540-41, 121 S.Ct. 1043. The Court interpreted Rust as having implicitly reli[ed] on the rationale that the counseling activities of the doctors under Title X amounted to governmental speech, explaining that viewpoint-based funding decisions can be sustained in instances in which the government is itself the speaker, or instances, like Rust, in which the government use[s] private speakers to transmit information pertaining to its own program. Id. at 541, 121 S.Ct. 1043 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The Velazquez II Court held, however, that the LSC program, unlike Title X, was not designed ... to promote a governmental message, as an LSC-funded lawyer is not the government's speaker, but rather speaks on the behalf of his or her private, indigent client. Id. at 542, 121 S.Ct. 1043. Therefore, Rust did not save the viewpoint-based restriction on seeking welfare reform. The Court declined to review the portion of Velazquez I that had upheld the LSC's program integrity regulations. 532 U.S. 903, 121 S.Ct. 1224, 149 L.Ed.2d 135 (2001) (Mem.) (denying certiorari). Following Velazquez II, the Velazquez plaintiffs brought an as-applied challenge to the LSC regulations. BLS, 462 F.3d at 224. The district court enjoined application of the regulations, reasoning that they imposed an undue burden on the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights, as LSC's interest in program integrity could be fulfilled by means less restrictive. Id. at 222, 229. On appeal, we held that the district court's application of an undue burden/less-restrictive-means test to the regulations was error, reiterating the standard articulated in Velazquez I  that grantees' First Amendment rights may be burdened if they are left with adequate alternative channels for protected expression. Id. at 229-31. We therefore remanded for the district court to evaluate the program integrity regulations under that standard.
Applying these cases to the one before us, we conclude that the Policy Requirement, as implemented by the Agencies, falls well beyond what the Supreme Court and this Court have upheld as permissible funding conditions. Unlike the funding conditions in the cases discussed above, the Policy Requirement does not merely restrict recipients from engaging in certain expression (such as lobbying ( Regan ), editorializing ( League of Women Voters ), abortion-related speech ( Rust ), or welfare reform litigation (the LSC cases)), but pushes considerably further and mandates that recipients affirmatively say something  that they are opposed to the practice[] of prostitution, 45 C.F.R. § 89.1. The Policy Requirement is viewpoint-based, and it compels recipients, as a condition of funding, to espouse the government's position. Compelling speech as a condition of receiving a government benefit cannot be squared with the First Amendment. See, e.g., Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705, 714-17, 97 S.Ct. 1428, 51 L.Ed.2d 752 (1977) (finding unconstitutional requirement that drivers, as condition of using the roads, display state motto Live Free or Die on license plates); Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 518-19, 78 S.Ct. 1332, 2 L.Ed.2d 1460 (1958) (finding unconstitutional requirement that veterans, as condition of receiving property tax exemption, declare that they do not advocate the forcible overthrow of government); W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 633, 642, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 87 L.Ed. 1628 (1943) (finding unconstitutional requirement that schoolchildren, as condition of going to school, salute the flag; stating that such involuntary affirmation could be commanded only on even more immediate and urgent grounds than silence). Here, much as in Wooley, Speiser, and Barnette, silence, or neutrality, is not an option for Plaintiffs. In order to avoid losing Leadership Act funding, they must declare their opposition to prostitution. As Defendants correctly point out, these traditional compelled speech cases involved already-existing public benefits, not government funding programs, and are therefore distinguishable in that respect. But these cases teach that where, as here, the government seeks to affirmatively require government-preferred speech, its efforts raise serious First Amendment concerns. [3] The Supreme Court recently implied as much in FAIR, where it upheld the Solomon Amendment's requirement that universities permit military recruiters on campus as a condition of receiving federal funding. The Court noted that [t]here is nothing in this case approaching a Government-mandated pledge or motto that the school must endorse. 547 U.S. at 61-62, 126 S.Ct. 1297. The Policy Requirement calls for exactly that. The Policy Requirement is also viewpoint-based, because it requires recipients to take the government's side on a particular issue. It is well established that viewpoint-based intrusions on free speech offend the First Amendment. See Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 828, 115 S.Ct. 2510, 132 L.Ed.2d 700 (1995) (It is axiomatic that the government may not regulate speech based on its substantive content or the message it conveys.); Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of the N.Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. 105, 116, 112 S.Ct. 501, 116 L.Ed.2d 476 (1991) (stating broad[] principle [that] [r]egulations which permit the Government to discriminate on the basis of the content of the message cannot be tolerated under the First Amendment (internal quotation marks omitted)). Although viewpoint-based funding conditions that target speech are not necessarily unconstitutional, see Rust, 500 U.S. 173, 111 S.Ct. 1759, such conditions are constitutionally troublesome. In Regan, for example, the Court applied minimal scrutiny in reviewing a condition that was, unlike the Policy Requirement, decidedly viewpoint- neutral (it banned all lobbying by § 501(c)(3) organizations, regardless of the nature of the legislation or the organization's position on it). See 461 U.S. at 541, 548, 103 S.Ct. 1997. In League of Women Voters, which invalidated a viewpoint-neutral restriction on editorializing, all four dissenting Justices indicated that if the restriction were viewpoint-based, they too would find it constitutionally problematic. See 468 U.S. at 407-08, 104 S.Ct. 3106 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (emphasizing that condition was strictly neutral, not directed at editorial views of one particular ideological bent); id. at 413, 104 S.Ct. 3106 (Stevens, J., dissenting) ([O]f greatest significance for me, the statutory restriction is completely neutral in its operation  it prohibits all editorials without any distinction being drawn concerning ... the point of view that might be expressed.); cf. Rosenberger, 515 U.S. at 829, 115 S.Ct. 2510 (When the government targets not subject matter, but particular views taken by speakers on a subject, the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant.). The LSC cases confirm this conclusion. In Velazquez I, we invalidated as viewpoint-discriminatory a restriction prohibiting LSC grantees from representing clients seeking welfare reform. 164 F.3d at 769-72. The Supreme Court affirmed, concluding that Rust could not justify the restriction because although, as Rust had implicitly established, viewpoint-based funding decisions can be sustained in instances in which ... the government use[s] private speakers to transmit information pertaining to its own program, the LSC grantees were not speaking on behalf of the government. Velazquez II, 531 U.S. at 540-42, 121 S.Ct. 1043 (internal quotation marks omitted). Finally, in BLS, while we remanded for the district court to apply the adequate alternative channels test to the LSC's viewpoint-neutral program integrity regulations, we expressly recognized, citing Velazquez I, that substantive restrictions that are directed toward speech as such might require closer attention  an issue that [went] to the... statutory restrictions challenged in [the LSC] cases. See BLS, 462 F.3d at 230. The Policy Requirement is substantive, viewpoint-based, and directed toward speech, as it affirmatively requires recipients to speak. It is this bold combination in a funding condition of a speech-targeted restriction that is both affirmative and quintessentially viewpoint-based that warrants heightened scrutiny. Furthermore, the targeted speech, concerning prostitution in the context of the international HIV/AIDS-prevention effort, is a subject of international debate. The right to communicate freely on such matters of public concern lies at the heart of the First Amendment. See NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 913, 102 S.Ct. 3409, 73 L.Ed.2d 1215 (1982) ([E]xpression on public issues has always rested on the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values. (internal quotation marks omitted)). The Policy Requirement offends that principle, mandating that Plaintiffs affirmatively espouse the government's position on a contested public issue where the differences are both real and substantive. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) have recognized advocating for the reduction of penalties for prostitution  to prevent such penalties from interfering with outreach efforts  as among the best practices for HIV/AIDS prevention. [4] Plaintiffs claim that being forced to declare their opposition to prostitution harms [their] credibility and integrity as NGOs, which generally avoid taking controversial policy positions likely to offend host nations [and] partner organizations, and risks offending all of the[] groups whose approach to HIV/AIDS may differ from that of the government, not to mention some of the very people, prostitutes, whose trust they must earn to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. Appellees' Br. 11-12.
In defending the Policy Requirement's viewpoint-based speech mandate, the Agencies turn to Rust, which upheld a viewpoint-based prohibition on abortion counseling. Since Rust, the Supreme Court has explained that decision as having implicitly relied upon a government speech principle, stating that: viewpoint-based funding decisions can be sustained in instances in which the government is itself the speaker, or instances, like Rust, in which the government use[s] private speakers to transmit information pertaining to its own program. Velazquez II, 531 U.S. at 541, 121 S.Ct. 1043 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). This is because when the government appropriates public funds to promote a particular policy of its own it is entitled to say what it wishes. Rosenberger, 515 U.S. at 833, 115 S.Ct. 2510 ([W]e have permitted the government to regulate the content of what is or is not expressed when it is the speaker or when it enlists private entities to convey its own message.). Therefore, [w]hen the government disburses public funds to private entities to convey a governmental message, it may take legitimate and appropriate steps to ensure that its message is neither garbled nor distorted by the grantee. Id. According to the Agencies, this case is, like Rust, a government-speech case because in enacting the Leadership Act, Congress sought to advance to the greatest extent possible its message opposing prostitution, chose to enlist the recipients of Leadership Act funding to disseminate its message, and, to ensure that the message was conveyed effectively, ... required that those recipients have [an anti-prostitution] policy. Appellants' Br. 32; see DKT Int'l, Inc. v. U.S. Agency for Int'l Dev., 477 F.3d 758, 761-63 (D.C.Cir.2007) (upholding Policy Requirement). We are not persuaded. The Policy Requirement goes well beyond the funding condition upheld in Rust because it compels Plaintiffs to voice the government's viewpoint and to do so as if it were their own. Indeed, the Rust Court expressly observed that [n]othing in [the challenged regulations] requires a doctor to represent as his own any opinion that he does not in fact hold.  500 U.S. at 200, 111 S.Ct. 1759 (emphasis added). Rather, the grantee's staff could remain silen[t] with regard to abortion, and, if asked about abortion, was free to make clear that advice regarding abortion is simply beyond the scope of the program. Id. [5] Here, on the other hand, Plaintiffs do not have the option of remaining silent or neutral. Instead, they must represent as their own an opinion  that they affirmatively oppose prostitution  that they might not categorically hold. Suffice it to say that Rust would have been a very different case had the government gone as far as requiring Title X recipients to affirmatively adopt a policy statement opposing abortion, in the way the Leadership Act mandates the adoption of a policy statement opposing prostitution. The government has, by compelling NGOs to affirmatively pledge their opposition to prostitution, stepped beyond what might have been appropriate to ensure that its anti-prostitution message would not be garbled or distorted, Rosenberger, 515 U.S. at 833, 115 S.Ct. 2510. We do not mean to imply that the government may never require affirmative, viewpoint-specific speech as a condition of participating in a federal program. To use an example supplied by Defendants, if the government were to fund a campaign urging children to Just Say No to drugs, we do not doubt that it could require grantees to state that they oppose drug use by children. But in that scenario, the government's program is, in effect, its message. That is not so here. The stated purpose of the Leadership Act is to fight HIV/AIDS, as well as tuberculosis, and malaria. [6] Defendants cannot now recast the Leadership Act's global HIV/AIDS-prevention program as an anti-prostitution messaging campaign. Cf. Velazquez II, 531 U.S. at 547, 121 S.Ct. 1043 (Congress cannot recast a condition on funding as a mere definition of its program in every case, lest the First Amendment be reduced to a simple semantic exercise.). If the government-speech principle allowed Congress to compel funding recipients to affirmatively espouse its viewpoint on every subsidiary issue subsumed within a federal spending program, the exception would swallow the rule. Defendants assert that advocating against prostitution is indeed central to the Leadership Act program, Appellants' Br. 32, but it is difficult to reconcile that assertion with what the Act does. As we have seen, the Policy Requirement expressly exempts three organizations and all U.N. agencies from having to comply with it. 22 U.S.C. § 7631(f) ([T]his subsection shall not apply to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Health Organization, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative or to any United Nations agency.). As previously noted, the WHO and UNAIDS have taken a public position at odds with the Policy Requirement, recognizing the reduction of penalties for prostitution as a best practice in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Defendants attempt to distinguish these exempted recipients on the ground that they are public international organizations, such that forcing them to adopt an anti-prostitution policy would require multilateral negotiations. Appellants' Br. 58. But if anti-prostitution advocacy were central to the government's program, it could, of course, simply choose not to fund these organizations. In short, the Agencies' suggestion that requiring Plaintiffs to adopt an anti-prostitution policy statement is integral to the Leadership Act program is undermined by the fact that the government has chosen to fund high-profile, global organizations that remain free to express  and indeed openly express  a contrary policy, or no policy at all. [7] Nor are we persuaded by the Agencies' argument that the Policy Requirement is entitled to leeway because it implicates foreign affairs. Appellants' Br. 34-35. While mindful of the government's strong interest in managing international relations, we agree with the district court that this interest, in this case, does not warrant the deference that the Agencies request. See Alliance I, 430 F.Supp.2d at 265-67. The Agencies' reliance on DKT Memorial Fund Ltd. v. Agency for International Development, 887 F.2d 275 (D.C.Cir.1989), is misplaced, as that case centered around a restriction on the First Amendment activities of foreign NGOs receiving U.S. government funds. The challenge here is to the impact of the Policy Requirement on domestic NGOs. Indeed, the Agencies have applied the Policy Requirement to foreign organizations since its inception, without challenge. This litigation arose only after the government reversed course and began also applying the Requirement to U.S.-based organizations like AOSI and Path-finder. The Policy Requirement compels domestic NGOs to adopt a policy statement on a particular issue, and prohibits them from engaging in certain expression at, for example, conferences and forums throughout the United States. These factors convince us that the speech is far more of a domestic than a foreign concern.
Finally, the Agencies contend that any compelled-speech type problems in the Policy Requirement are successfully addressed by the Guidelines because any entity unwilling to state its opposition to prostitution can form an affiliate that does so. As a consequence, the Agencies assert, the parent organization is not compelled to speak any message at all. But this assertion fails to confront the fact that whether the recipient is a parent or an affiliate, it is required to affirmatively speak the government's viewpoint on prostitution. The adequate alternative channels for protected expression test, which is predicated on the rationale that limitations on speech are permissible if grantees can express their opinions elsewhere, does not provide the proper framework for evaluating the Policy Requirement's speech mandate. The curative function of an adequate alternative channel is to alleviate the burden of a constraint on speech by providing an outlet that allows an organization to engage  through the use of an affiliate  in the privately funded expression that otherwise would have been impermissibly prohibited by the federal program. For example, in Regan, a § 501(c)(3) organization's ability to form a § 501(c)(4) affiliate freed it to engage in privately funded lobbying, and, in League of Women Voters, the funding restriction would have been saved if the recipient stations had been allowed to form affiliates to engage in privately funded editorializing. It simply does not make sense to conceive of the Guidelines here as somehow addressing the Policy Requirement's affirmative speech requirement by affording an outlet to engage in privately funded silence; in other words, by providing an outlet to do nothing at all. It may very well be that the Guidelines afford Plaintiffs an adequate outlet for expressing their opinions on prostitution, but there remains, on top of that, the additional, affirmative requirement that the recipient entity pledge its opposition to prostitution. As the district court aptly stated, [w]hile the Guidelines may or may not provide an adequate alternate channel for Plaintiffs to express their views regarding prostitution, the clause requiring Plaintiffs to adopt the Government's view regarding ... prostitution remains intact. Alliance III, 570 F.Supp.2d at 545. The Guidelines, by their very nature, do not account for that requirement. For the reasons set forth above, we conclude that Plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their First Amendment challenge. Because the Policy Requirement compels grantees to espouse the government's position on a controversial issue, the district court did not abuse its discretion in preliminarily enjoining its enforcement pending a trial on the merits. [8]