Opinion ID: 530524
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: AID Restrictions on Subgrants

Text: 85 In addition to the claims asserted that AID's implementation of the Mexico City Policy infringes the supposed constitutional rights of the FNGOs, the DNGO DKT Memorial, asserts that the Policy and the implementing grant clauses unconstitutionally burden its rights to freedom of association. Its argument is twofold. First, DKT asserts that the provision forbidding subgrants by domestic grant recipients to FNGOs who are ineligible to receive grants directly interferes with the domestic recipient's right to associate with FNGOs of its choice in nonabortion-related projects. The concrete factual setting for the assertion of this claim arises from the project in Uttar Pradesh, India, described in the amended complaint. All parties agree for purposes of the present litigation that the project would be eligible for subgrant funds, but for the unwillingness of the FNGOs to comply with AID's abortion-related restrictions. DKT asserts that but for the grant clauses, it would be free to associate with the nonconforming FNGOs in the Uttar Pradesh project and asserts that the clauses therefore impermissibly infringe its freedom of association. AID's response is a simple one. AID essentially says DKT is just as free to associate with the FNGO's as they ever were. They just can't do it on our money. 86 Factually, AID is obviously correct. And, we conclude, AID is legally correct as well. By way of background to this conclusion, we note that freedom of association, while not expressly mentioned in the Constitution, is protected as a First Amendment right, under the Supreme Court's decision in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958). In that decision, which struck down an Alabama statute requiring disclosure of membership lists of the petitioning association, the Supreme Court recognized that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the 'liberty' assured by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech. Id. at 460, 78 S.Ct. at 1171. In succeeding cases, the Supreme Court has found constitutionally protected 'freedom of association' in two distinct senses. Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 617, 104 S.Ct. 3244, 3249, 82 L.Ed.2d 462 (1984). One line of cases secures the individual freedom to enter into and maintain certain intimate relationships, id., principally marriage and the family. See generally id. at 618-20, 104 S.Ct. at 3249-50. The second, and the one with which we are concerned in the present case, recognizes a right to associate for the purpose of engaging in ... activities protected by the First Amendment, id. at 618, 104 S.Ct. at 3249, including speech. 87 The Supreme Court has recognized the constitutional protection of the right of expressive association in varied contexts, see cases collected in Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. at 618-21, 104 S.Ct. at 3249-51, but plaintiffs have offered no case in which the Court has extended this protection to the decision of two or three organizations to associate together for the conduct of an undertaking, such as the Uttar Pradesh population planning project, involving much conduct and some expression. Nor have we found any such case. Perhaps the closest example in prior Supreme Court law to the facts at hand is Lyng v. International Union, UAW, 485 U.S. 360, 108 S.Ct. 1184, 99 L.Ed.2d 380 (1988), in which labor unions and their members asserted the rights of the members to associate together for the purpose of conducting a strike. The Court recognized that the right to association encompasses the combination of individual workers together in order better to assert their lawful rights. Id. at ----, 108 S.Ct. at 1189. 88 That case was certainly stronger for the union members than is the present case for the three NGOs. In that case the purpose of the particular project for which the unions and their members sought protection of associative rights was directly to exercise freedom of expression. In the present case, DKT does not assert that the project at Uttar Pradesh is to exercise freedom of speech per se, but rather that their associative rights in this project be protected because of their expression elsewhere. Again we know of no case that goes so far, and we are unwilling to hold on the present record that the constitutional protection of the right to associate is so extended. However, since we will conclude that even if the right does so extend, the policy and the grant clauses work no infringement of the right, we will assume for purposes of this opinion that the combination of the NGOs in the Uttar Pradesh project is entitled to freedom of association protection. 89 Our conclusion that the policy and the grant clauses work no infringement of the assumed right of association is based on precisely the factual assertion made by DKT. The restriction on subgranting creates no obstacle in the way of DKT's association with the FNGOs that would not be there absent the existence of the grant program in the first place. The only thing that presently prevents DKT and the FNGOs from associating in the Uttar Pradesh project is the unwillingness or inability of DKT and its prospective partners to fund the project. If they become willing or able to fund the project with their own money, or money granted by some source other than United States foreign aid funds, then they can undertake the project immediately. Neither AID nor any other arm of the federal government has erected the obstacle of impecunity or parsimony, they have simply declined to clear that obstacle out of the NGOs' way. 90 Just as the Supreme Court in Maher v. Roe, supra, concluded that the Connecticut regulations against funding nontherapeutic abortions did not interfere with the rights recognized in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973), neither does the present policy or its implementation interfere with the right of association. In that case, as we noted above, the regulation placed no obstacle in the pregnant woman's path, Maher, 432 U.S. at 474, 97 S.Ct. at 2382, but only left her as dependent as before on private sources for the service she desired. Similarly, in the present case, the decision of the government not to fund the association of DNGOs with FNGOs who engage in pro-abortion activity only leaves the DNGOs as dependent on private source funds as they were before. 91 As we also noted above, not only Maher v. Roe, but a whole line of Supreme Court cases teaches us that the refusal to subsidize the exercise of a constitutionally protected right is not tanamount to an infringement of that right. See, e.g., Regan v. Taxation With Representation, 461 U.S. 540, 103 S.Ct. 1997, 76 L.Ed.2d 129 (1983); Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 96 S.Ct. 612, 46 L.Ed.2d 659 (1976); and Cammarano v. United States, 358 U.S. 498, 79 S.Ct. 524, 3 L.Ed.2d 462 (1959). Perhaps particularly instructive is language from Buckley. That case considered the constitutionality of public financing under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, 86 Stat. 3, as amended by the Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974, 88 Stat. 1263. As we noted above, that Act provided financial subsidies for some but not all candidates for certain offices. In upholding the constitutionality of this differentiation in subsidy, the Court rejected an analogy to such cases as American Party of Texas v. White, 415 U.S. 767, 94 S.Ct. 1296, 39 L.Ed.2d 744 (1974), which had stricken down burdensome restrictions on obtaining places on ballots. In rejecting that analogy, the Court reasoned that the funding law 92 does not prevent any candidate from getting on the ballot or any voter from casting a vote for the candidate of his choice; the inability, if any, of minor-party candidates to wage effective campaigns will derive not from lack of public funding but from their inability to raise private contributions. 93 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 94-95, 96 S.Ct. at 670-71. 94 As the Supreme Court observed in Maher v. Roe, [t]here is a basic difference between direct state interference with a protected activity and state encouragement of an alternative activity consummate with legislative policy. 432 U.S. at 475, 97 S.Ct. at 2383. Without reiterating the discussion of the various cases distinguishing between interference with the exercise of a right and the refusal to subsidize it, we conclude that the decision of the Executive not to fund certain associations by subgrant as well as by grant infringes no right of the DNGO desiring to join in the unsubsidized association. 95 We are given confidence in the conclusion by the Supreme Court's decision in Lyng v. International Union, UAW, supra. In that case, strikers challenged on freedom of association grounds the constitutionality of a statute restricting the eligibility of households containing strikers to obtain food stamps. The statute not only prohibited such households from qualifying for allotment of food stamps but placed them in a less favorable status than families containing members who voluntarily quit jobs. The households containing strikers were ineligible for the duration of the strike, no matter how long, whereas voluntary quitters regained eligibility after ninety days. Even in light of this asserted discrimination, the Court subjected the statute only to a rationality analysis, and concluded that this refusal to subsidize was valid since it was rationally related to the stated objective of maintaining neutrality in private labor disputes. 485 U.S. at ----, 108 S.Ct. at 1193. As we concluded above, the decision of the Executive to fund some but not all population planning activity is not an invidious discrimination. The decision not to indirectly fund the same activity which the government has declined to fund directly is obviously rationally and perhaps necessarily related to the decision not to fund the activity in the first place, cf. Grove City College v. Bell, supra (upholding restrictions on aid to education by giving the same effect to indirect aid to college through federally insured loans to students as to direct aid). We will no more invade the province of the executive branch to make its policy determinations as to subsidization on DKT's attack on limitations of indirect aid than on the FNGOs' attack on direct aid. 96