Opinion ID: 220365
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Rust and the Government-Speech Doctrine

Text: 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.