News Release: Silver Linings Found in Supreme Court's Southwo rth Decision

[Volokh, Eugene]

        FYI, just thought some people on the list might find this of
interest.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: UTStudentsAffEdu at aol.com [SMTP:UTStudentsAffEdu at aol.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 3:01 PM
> To:   undisclosed-recipients
> Subject:      News Release: Silver Linings Found in Supreme Court's
> Southworth Decision
>
> Students for Affordable Education
>
> March 22, 2000                  Contact: Marc Levin, President
> For Immediate Release           Phone: (512) 453-7989, (713) 906-1833
>
> News Release: SAE Sees Important Silver Linings in Today's Supreme Court
> Southworth Decision
>
> Austin, TX - Students for Affordable Education (SAE), a registered student
>
> organization at the University of Texas at Austin which in 1996
> successfully
> fought the imposition of a mandatory student fee for Ralph Nader's Texas
> Public Interest Research Group (TEXPIRG), sees several important silver
> linings in today's U.S. Supreme Court Southworth v. University of
> Wisconsin
> decision.
>
> In this ruling, the Court unanimously overturned a lower court decision
> holding that Southworth's First Amendment rights were violated by the
> University of Wisconsin's allocation of mandatory student fees to
> left-wing
> student groups.
>
> SAE President Marc Levin declared, "Although we wish that the Supreme
> Court
> would have extended to students the same First Amendment protection labor
> union members now enjoy by requiring student political contributions to be
>
> voluntary rather than mandatory, the decision is a step in the right
> direction.  The key is that the plaintiffs in Southworth stipulated the
> funding was viewpoint neutral, even though the vast majority of student
> groups that Wisconsin and most public universities fund are on the far
> left.
> The majority decision, while it appears to be a defeat on the surface,
> holds
> that mandatory funding for political and ideological student is
> constitutional only if there is viewpoint neutrality.  Thus, universities
> which fund liberal causes while withholding money from conservative
> student
> groups are now acting unconstitutionally and can be successfully
> challenged."
>
> Levin continued, "In addition to the viewpoint neutrality requirement,
> there
> is another related silver lining in the Court's decision.  The Court
> correctly found that allocating money to a political or ideological group
> based on a student referendum cannot possibly be viewpoint neutral since
> it
> is inextricably tied to the political views of the majority of students on
> a
> campus at the time of the election.  Thus, the Court held that the portion
> of
> Wisconsin's allocation scheme that includes a student referendum amounts
> to
> unconstitutional forced political speech."
>
> Levin concluded, "The fact that liberal Justices David Souther, Stephen
> Breyer, and John Paul Stevens felt compelled to file a concurrence that
> criticizes the majority's creation of a viewpoint neutrality requirement
> is
> significant.  It demonstrates that the majority's opinion is far from a
> total
> loss for those of us who oppose the mandatory confiscation of student fees
>
> for political purposes.  Now armed with the Southworth requirement of
> viewpoint neutrality, Students for Affordable Education will thoroughly
> examine the University of Texas' use of student fees to make sure that it
> is
> unbiased.  Furthermore, we demand that the University immediately ask its
> legal counsel to conduct such an inquiry."
>
> SAE, an officially recognized UT student governance organization, has led
> many successful campus activism efforts, including a campaign which
> resulted
> in a 65 to 35 percent defeat of the TEXPIRG proposal in a 1996 student
> referendum.  Most recently, SAE stopped the Student Government from
> engaging
> in illegal advocacy efforts relating to the November 2 Texas
> constitutional
> amendment election.
>
> For further comment on this issue, please contact Marc Levin at (512)
> 453-7989 or (713) 906-1833, or by email at UTStudentsAffEdu at aol.com.
>
> -30-
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