SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, et al., PETITIONERS v. ALLIANCE FOR OPEN SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL, INC., et al.

Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court.

The United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003 (Leadership Act) outlined a comprehensive strategy to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS around the world. As part of that strategy, Congress authorized the appropriation of billions of dollars to fund efforts by nongovernmental organizations to assist in the fight. The Act imposes two related conditions on that funding: First, no funds made available by the Act “may be used to promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution or sex trafficking.” And second, no funds may be used by an organization “that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.” This case concerns the second of these conditions, referred to as the Policy Requirement. The question is whether that funding condition violates a recipient’s First Amendment rights.

I

Congress passed the Leadership Act in 2003 after finding that HIV/AIDS had “assumed pandemic proportions, spreading from the most severely affected regions, sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, to all corners of the world, and leaving an unprecedented path of death and devastation.” According to congressional findings, more than 65 million people had been infected by HIV and more than 25 million had lost their lives, making HIV/AIDS the fourth highest cause of death worldwide. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, AIDS had claimed the lives of more than 19 million individuals and was projected to kill a full quarter of the population of that area over the next decade. The disease not only directly endangered those infected, but also increased the potential for social and political instability and economic devastation, posing a security issue for the entire international community.

In the Leadership Act, Congress directed the President to establish a “comprehensive, integrated” strategy to combat HIV/AIDS around the world....The Act “make[s] the reduction of HIV/AIDS behavioral risks a priority of all prevention efforts.”  The Act’s approach to reducing behavioral risks is multifaceted. The President’s strategy for addressing such risks must, for example, promote abstinence, encourage monogamy, increase the availability of condoms, promote voluntary counseling and treatment for drug users, and, as relevant here, “educat[e] men and boys about the risks of procuring sex commercially” as well as “promote alternative livelihoods, safety, and social reintegration strategies for commercial sex workers.” Congress found that the “sex industry, the trafficking of individuals into such industry, and sexual violence” were factors in the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and determined that “it should be the policy of the United States to eradicate” prostitution and “other sexual victimization.”

The United States has enlisted the assistance of nongovernmental organizations to help achieve the many goals of the program. Such organizations “with experience in health care and HIV/AIDS counseling,” Congress found, “have proven effective in combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic and can be a resource in . . . provid[ing] treatment and care for individuals infected with HIV/AIDS.” Since 2003, Congress has authorized the appropriation of billions of dollars for funding these organizations’ fight against HIV/AIDS around the world.

Those funds, however, come with two conditions: First, no funds made available to carry out the Leadership Act “may be used to promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution or sex trafficking.”Second, no funds made available may “provide assistance to any group or organization that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking, except . . . 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.” §7631(f). It is this second condition—the Policy Requirement—that is at issue here.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are the federal agencies primarily responsible for overseeing implementation of the Leadership Act. To enforce the Policy Requirement, the agencies have directed that the recipient of any funding under the Act agree in the award document that it is opposed to “prostitution and sex trafficking because of the psychological and physical risks they pose for women, men, and children.”

II

Respondents are a group of domestic organizations engaged in combating HIV/AIDS overseas. In addition to substantial private funding, they receive billions annually in financial assistance from the United States, including under the Leadership Act. Their work includes programs aimed at limiting injection drug use in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission in Kenya, and promoting safer sex practices in India. Respondents fear that adopting a policy explicitly opposing prostitution may alienate certain host governments, and may diminish the effectiveness of some of their programs by making it more difficult to work with prostitutes in the fight against HIV/AIDS. They are also concerned that the Policy Requirement may require them to censor their privately funded discussions in publications, at conferences, and in other forums about how best to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS among prostitutes.

In 2005, respondents Alliance for Open Society International and Pathfinder International commenced this litigation, seeking a declaratory judgment that the Government’s implementation of the Policy Requirement violated their First Amendment rights. Respondents sought a preliminary injunction barring the Government from cutting off their funding under the Act for the duration of the litigation, from unilaterally terminating their cooperative agreements with the United States, or from otherwise taking action solely on the basis of respondents’ own privately funded speech. The District Court granted such a preliminary injunction, and the Government appealed....

We granted certiorari.

III

The Policy Requirement mandates that recipients of Leadership Act funds explicitly agree with the Government’s policy to oppose prostitution and sex trafficking. It is, however, a basic First Amendment principle that “freedom of speech prohibits the government from telling people what they must say.”  Were it enacted as a direct regulation of speech, the Policy Requirement would plainly violate the First Amendment. The question is whether the Government may nonetheless impose that requirement as a condition on the receipt of federal funds.

A

The Spending Clause of the Federal Constitution grants Congress the power “[t]o 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.” Art. I, §8, cl. 1. The Clause provides Congress broad discretion to tax and spend for the “general Welfare,” including by funding particular state or private programs or activities. That power includes the authority to impose limits on the use of such funds to ensure they are used in the manner Congress intends. Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173, n. 4 (1991).

As a general matter, if a party objects to a condition on the receipt of federal funding, its recourse is to decline the funds. This remains true when the objection is that a condition may affect the recipient’s exercise of its First Amendment rights. See, e.g., United States v. American Library Assn., Inc. (2003) (rejecting a claim by public libraries that conditioning funds for Internet access on the libraries’ installing filtering software violated their First Amendment rights, explaining that “[t]o the extent that libraries wish to offer unfiltered access, they are free to do so without federal assistance”).

At the same time, however, we have held that 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.’ ” In some cases, a funding condition can result in an unconstitutional burden on First Amendment rights. 

The dissent thinks that can only be true when the condition is not relevant to the objectives of the program (although it has its doubts about that), or when the condition is actually coercive, in the sense of an offer that cannot be refused. Our precedents, however, are not so limited. In the present context, the relevant distinction that has emerged from our cases is between conditions that define the limits of the government spending program—those that specify the activities Congress wants to subsidize—and conditions that seek to leverage funding to regulate speech outside the contours of the program itself. The line is hardly clear, in part because the definition of a particular program can always be manipulated to subsume the challenged condition. We have held, however, that “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.” Legal Services Corporation v. Velazquez (2001) ....

B

As noted, the distinction drawn in these cases—between conditions that define the federal program and those that reach outside it—is not always self-evident. As Justice Cardozo put it in a related context, “Definition more precise must abide the wisdom of the future.” Here, however, we are confident that the Policy Requirement falls on the unconstitutional side of the line.

To begin, it is important to recall that the Leadership Act has two conditions relevant here. The first—unchallenged in this litigation—prohibits Leadership Act funds from being used “to promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution or sex trafficking.”  The Government concedes that §7631(e) by itself ensures that federal funds will not be used for the prohibited purposes.

The Policy Requirement therefore must be doing something more—and it is. The dissent views the Requirement as simply a selection criterion by which the Government identifies organizations “who believe in its ideas to carry them to fruition.” As an initial matter, whatever purpose the Policy Requirement serves in selecting funding recipients, its effects go beyond selection. The Policy Requirement is an ongoing condition on recipients’ speech and activities, a ground for terminating a grant after selection is complete. In any event, as the Government acknowledges, it is not simply seeking organizations that oppose prostitution. Rather, it explains, “Congress has expressed its purpose ‘to eradicate’ prostitution and sex trafficking, and it wants recipients to adopt a similar stance.” This case is not about the Government’s ability to enlist the assistance of those with whom it already agrees. It is about compelling a grant recipient to adopt a particular belief as a condition of funding.

By demanding that funding recipients adopt—as their own—the Government’s view on an issue of public concern, the condition by its very nature affects “protected conduct outside the scope of the federally funded program.” A recipient cannot avow the belief dictated by the Policy Requirement when spending Leadership Act funds, and then turn around and assert a contrary belief, or claim neutrality, when participating in activities on its own time and dime. By requiring recipients to profess a specific belief, the Policy Requirement goes beyond defining the limits of the federally funded program to defining the recipient....

Pressing its argument further, the Government contends that “if organizations awarded federal funds to implement Leadership Act programs could at the same time promote or affirmatively condone prostitution or sex trafficking, whether using public or private funds, it would undermine the government’s program and confuse its message opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.” But the Policy Requirement goes beyond preventing recipients from using private funds in a way that would undermine the federal program. It requires them to pledge allegiance to the Government’s policy of eradicating prostitution. As to that, we cannot improve upon what Justice Jackson wrote for the Court 70 years ago: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

The Policy Requirement compels as a condition of federal funding the affirmation of a belief that by its nature cannot be confined within the scope of the Government program. In so doing, it violates the First Amendment and cannot be sustained. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

Justice Scalia, with whom Justice Thomas joins, dissenting.

The Leadership Act provides that “any group or organization that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking” may not receive funds appropriated under the Act. This Policy Requirement is nothing more than a means of selecting suitable agents to implement the Government’s chosen strategy to eradicate HIV/AIDS. That is perfectly permissible under the Constitution.

The First Amendment does not mandate a viewpoint-neutral government. Government must choose between rival ideas and adopt some as its own: competition over cartels, solar energy over coal, weapon development over disarmament, and so forth. Moreover, the government may enlist the assistance of those who believe in its ideas to carry them to fruition; and it need not enlist for that purpose those who oppose or do not support the ideas. That seems to me a matter of the most common common sense. For example: One of the purposes of America’s foreign-aid programs is the fostering of good will towards this country. If the organization Hamas—reputed to have an efficient system for delivering welfare—were excluded from a program for the distribution of U. S. food assistance, no one could reasonably object. And that would remain true if Hamas were an organization of United States citizens entitled to the protection of the Constitution. So long as the unfunded organization remains free to engage in its activities (including anti-American propaganda) “without federal assistance,” refusing to make use of its assistance for an enterprise to which it is opposed does not abridge its speech. And the same is true when the rejected organization is not affirmatively opposed to, but merely unsupportive of, the object of the federal program, which appears to be the case here. (Respondents do not promote prostitution, but neither do they wish to oppose it.) A federal program to encourage healthy eating habits need not be administered by the American Gourmet Society, which has nothing against healthy food but does not insist upon it.

The argument is that this commonsense principle will enable the government to discriminate against, and injure, points of view to which it is opposed. Of course the Constitution does not prohibit government spending that discriminates against, and injures, points of view to which the government is opposed; every government program which takes a position on a controversial issue does that. Anti-smoking programs injure cigar aficionados, programs encouraging sexual abstinence injure free-love advocates, etc. The constitutional prohibition at issue here is not a prohibition against discriminating against or injuring opposing points of view, but the First Amendment’s prohibition against the coercing of speech. I am frankly dubious that a condition for eligibility to participate in a minor federal program such as this one runs afoul of that prohibition even when the condition is irrelevant to the goals of the program. Not every disadvantage is a coercion.

But that is not the issue before us here. Here the views that the Government demands an applicant forswear—or that the Government insists an applicant favor—are relevant to the program in question. The program is valid only if the Government is entitled to disfavor the opposing view (here, advocacy of or toleration of prostitution). And if the program can disfavor it, so can the selection of those who are to administer the program. There is no risk that this principle will enable the Government to discriminate arbitrarily against positions it disfavors. It would not, for example, permit the Government to exclude from bidding on defense contracts anyone who refuses to abjure prostitution. But here a central part of the Government’s HIV/AIDS strategy is the suppression of prostitution, by which HIV is transmitted. It is entirely reasonable to admit to participation in the program only those who believe in that goal.

According to the Court, however, this transgresses a constitutional line between conditions that operate inside a spending program and those that control speech outside of it. I am at a loss to explain what this central pillar of the Court’s opinion—this distinction that the Court itself admits is “hardly clear” and “not always self-evident,” has to do with the First Amendment. The distinction was alluded to, to be sure, in Rust v. Sullivan, but not as (what the Court now makes it) an invariable requirement for First Amendment validity. That the pro-abortion speech prohibition was limited to “inside the program” speech was relevant in Rust because the program itself was not an anti-abortion program. The Government remained neutral on that controversial issue, but did not wish abortion to be promoted within its family-planning-services program. The statutory objective could not be impaired, in other words, by “outside the program” pro-abortion speech. The purpose of the limitation was to prevent Government funding from providing the means of pro-abortion propaganda, which the Government did not wish (and had no constitutional obligation) to provide. The situation here is vastly different. Elimination of prostitution is an objective of the HIV/AIDS program, and any promotion of prostitution—whether made inside or outside the program—does harm the program.

Of course the most obvious manner in which the admission to a program of an ideological opponent can frustrate the purpose of the program is by freeing up the opponent’s funds for use in its ideological opposition. To use the Hamas example again: Subsidizing that organization’s provision of social services enables the money that it would otherwise use for that purpose to be used, instead, for anti-American propaganda. Perhaps that problem does not exist in this case since the respondents do not affirmatively promote prostitution. But the Court’s analysis categorically rejects that justification for ideological requirements in all cases, demanding “record indica[tion]” that “federal funding will simply supplant private funding, rather than pay for new programs.” This seems to me quite naive. Money is fungible. The economic reality is that when NGOs can conduct their AIDS work on the Government’s dime, they can expend greater resources on policies that undercut the Leadership Act. The Government need not establish by record evidence that this will happen. To make it a valid consideration in determining participation in federal programs, it suffices that this is a real and obvious risk....

The majority cannot credibly say that this speech condition is coercive, so it does not. It pussyfoots around the lack of coercion by invalidating the Leadership Act for “requiring recipients to profess a specific belief” and “demanding that funding recipients adopt—as their own—the Government’s view on an issue of public concern.” But like King Cnut’s commanding of the tides, here the Government’s “requiring” and “demanding” have no coercive effect. In the end, and in the circumstances of this case, “compell[ing] as a condition of federal funding the affirmation of a belief” is no compulsion at all. It is the reasonable price of admission to a limited government-spending program that each organization remains free to accept or reject.

Ideological-commitment requirements such as the one here are quite rare; but making the choice between competing applicants on relevant ideological grounds is undoubtedly quite common. See, e.g., Finley. As far as the Constitution is concerned, it is quite impossible to distinguish between the two. If the government cannot demand a relevant ideological commitment as a condition of application, neither can it distinguish between applicants on a relevant ideological ground. And that is the real evil of today’s opinion. One can expect, in the future, frequent challenges to the denial of government funding for relevant ideological reasons....