UNITED STATES et al. v. UNITED FOODS, INC.

Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

Decided June 25, 2001

Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C.J., and Stevens, Scalia, Souter, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Stevens, J., and Thomas, J., filed concurring opinions. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, J., joined, and in which OConnor, J., joined as to Parts I and III.
 

Four Terms ago, in Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., 521 U.S. 457 (1997), the Court rejected a First Amendment challenge to the constitutionality of a series of agricultural marketing orders that, as part of a larger regulatory marketing scheme, required producers of certain California tree fruit to pay assessments for product advertising. In this case a
federal statute mandates assessments on handlers of fresh mushrooms to fund advertising for the product. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit determined the mandated payments were not part of a more comprehensive statutory program for agricultural marketing, thus dictating a different result than in Glickman. It held the assessment requirement unconstitutional, and
we granted certiorari.

The statute in question, enacted by Congress in 1990, is the Mushroom Promotion, Research, and Consumer Information Act. The Act authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to establish a Mushroom Council to pursue the statutes goals. Mushroom producers and importers, as defined by the statute, submit nominations from among their group to the Secretary, who then designates the Council membership. To fund its programs, the Act allows the Council to impose mandatory assessments upon handlers of fresh mushrooms in an amount not to exceed one cent per pound of mushrooms produced or imported. The assessments can be used for projects of mushroom promotion, research, consumer information, and industry information.  It is undisputed, though, that most monies raised by the assessments are spent for generic advertising to promote mushroom sales.

Respondent United Foods, Inc., is a large agricultural enterprise based in Tennessee. It grows and distributes many crops and products, including fresh mushrooms. In 1996 respondent refused to pay its mandatory assessments under the Act. The forced subsidy for generic advertising, it contended, is a violation of the First Amendment. Respondent challenged the
assessments in a petition filed with the Secretary....

A quarter of a century ago, the Court held that commercial speech, usually defined as speech that does no more than propose a commercial transaction, is protected by the First Amendment. Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc. (1976). The commercial marketplace, like other spheres of our social and cultural life, provides a forum where ideas and information flourish.

We have used standards for determining the validity of speech regulations which accord less protection to commercial speech than to other expression. That approach, in turn, has been subject to some criticism. We need not enter into the controversy, for even viewing commercial speech as entitled to lesser protection, we find no basis under either Glickman or our other precedents to sustain the compelled assessments sought in this case. It should be noted, moreover, that the Government itself does not rely upon Central Hudson to challenge the Court of Appeals decision, and we therefore do not consider whether the Governments interest could be considered substantial for purposes of the Central Hudson test. The question is whether the government may underwrite and sponsor speech with a certain viewpoint using special subsidies exacted from a designated class of persons, some of whom object to the idea being advanced.

Just as the First Amendment may prevent the government from prohibiting speech, the Amendment may prevent the government from compelling individuals to express certain views, see Wooley v. Maynard (1977); West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette (1943), or from compelling certain individuals to pay subsidies for speech to which they object. Our precedents concerning compelled contributions to speech provide the beginning point for our analysis. The fact that the speech is in aid of a commercial purpose does not deprive respondent of all First Amendment protection, as held in the cases already cited. The subject matter of the speech may be of interest to but a small segment of the population; yet those whose business and livelihood depend in some way upon the product involved no doubt deem First Amendment protection to be just as important for them as it is for other discrete, little noticed groups in a society which values the freedom resulting from speech in all its diverse parts. First Amendment concerns apply here because of the requirement that producers subsidize speech with which they disagree.

[T]he general rule is that the speaker and the audience, not the government, assess the value of the information presented.  There are some instances in which compelled subsidies for speech contradict that constitutional principle. Here the disagreement could be seen as minor: Respondent wants to convey the message that its brand of mushrooms is superior to those grown by other producers. It objects to being charged for a message which seems to be favored by a majority of producers. The message is that mushrooms are worth consuming whether or not they are branded. First Amendment values are at serious risk if the government can compel a particular citizen, or a discrete group of citizens, to pay special subsidies for speech on the side that it favors; and there is no apparent principle which distinguishes out of hand minor debates about whether a branded mushroom is better than just any mushroom. As a consequence, the compelled funding for the advertising must pass First Amendment scrutiny.

In the Governments view the assessment in this case is permitted by Glickman because it is similar in important respects. It imposes no restraint on the freedom of an objecting party to communicate its own message; the program does not compel an objecting party (here a corporate entity) itself to express views it disfavors; and the mandated scheme does not compel the
expression of political or ideological views. The program sustained in Glickman differs from the one under review in a most fundamental respect. In Glickman the mandated assessments for speech were ancillary to a more comprehensive program restricting marketing autonomy. Here, for all practical purposes, the advertising itself, far from being ancillary, is the principal object of the regulatory scheme.

In Glickman we stressed from the very outset that the entire regulatory program must be considered in resolving the case. In deciding that case we emphasized the importance of the statutory context in which it arises.... The opinion and the analysis of the Court proceeded upon the premise that the producers were bound together and required by the statute to market their products according to cooperative rules. To that extent, their mandated participation in an advertising program with a particular message was the logical concomitant of a valid scheme of economic regulation.

The features of the marketing scheme found important in Glickman are not present in the case now before us. As respondent notes, and as the Government does not contest, almost all of the funds collected under the mandatory assessments are for one purpose: generic advertising. Beyond the collection and disbursement of advertising funds, there are no marketing orders that regulate how mushrooms may be produced and sold, no exemption from the antitrust laws, and nothing preventing individual producers from making their own marketing decisions. As the Court of Appeals recognized, there is no heavy regulation through marketing orders in the mushroom market. Mushroom producers are not forced to associate as a group which makes cooperative decisions. [T]he mushroom growing business is unregulated, except for the enforcement of a regional mushroom advertising program, and the mushroom market has not been collectivized, exempted from antitrust laws, subjected to a uniform price, or otherwise subsidized through price supports or restrictions on supply.

It is true that the party who protests the assessment here is required simply to support speech by others, not to utter the speech itself. We conclude, however, that the mandated support is contrary to the First Amendment principles set forth in cases involving expression by groups which include persons who object to the speech, but who, nevertheless, must remain members of the group by law or necessity.

The Government claims that, despite the lack of cooperative marketing, the Abood rule protecting against compelled assessments for some speech is inapplicable. We did say in Glickman that Abood recognized a First Amendment interest in not being compelled to contribute to an organization whose expressive activities conflict with ones freedom of belief. We take further instruction, however, from Aboods statement that speech need not be characterized as political before it receives First Amendment protection. A proper application of the rule in Abood requires us to invalidate the instant statutory scheme. Before addressing whether a conflict with freedom of belief exists, a threshold inquiry must be whether there is some state imposed obligation which makes group membership less than voluntary; for it is only the overriding associational purpose which allows any compelled subsidy for speech in the first place....

The statutory mechanism as it relates to handlers of mushrooms is concededly different from the scheme in Glickman; here the statute does not require group action, save to generate the very speech to which some handlers object. In contrast to the program upheld in Glickman, where the Government argued the compelled contributions for advertising were part of a far
broader regulatory system that does not principally concern speech, there is no broader regulatory system in place here. We have not upheld compelled subsidies for speech in the context of a program where the principal object is speech itself....

The Government argues the advertising here is government speech, and so immune from the scrutiny we would otherwise apply. As the Government admits in a forthright manner, however, this argument was not raised or addressed in the Court of Appeals. The Governments failure to raise its argument in the Court of Appeals deprived respondent of the ability to address significant matters that might have been difficult points for the Government. For example, although the Government asserts that advertising is subject to approval by the Secretary of Agriculture, respondent claims the approval is pro forma. This and other difficult issues would have to be addressed were the program to be labeled, and sustained, as government speech.

We need not address the question, however. Although in some instances we have allowed a respondent to defend a judgment on grounds other than those pressed or passed upon below, it is quite a different matter to allow a petitioner to assert new substantive arguments attacking, rather than defending, the judgment when those arguments were not pressed in the court whose opinion we are reviewing, or at least passed upon by it.

For the reasons we have discussed, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

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