Requirements to pay money to ideological group vs. requirements to personally help ideological group

Volokh, Eugene VOLOKH at law.ucla.edu
Mon Apr 21 15:42:00 PDT 2008


	I've long thought Abood and Keller were wrong, and that there's
no constitutionally significant difference between (1) having to pay
money to a union or state bar that would use the money for ideological
purposes, (2) having to pay money to the government's general tax fund,
which would use the money for ideological purposes, and (3) having to
pay money to the government's general tax fund, which would then pay it
to a union or state bar that would use the money for ideological
purposes.  Option 2 is constitutionally permissible; 3 must be as well;
and I can't see why 1 should be any different.

	Yet let's take as given Abood's and Keller's unanimous holdings
that the government generally may not require people to pay money to
ideological groups when that money will be used for ideological
expression that the payers disapprove of.  May the government then
require people to provide services to such groups, when the services
will be used to help in ideological expression that the payers
disapprove of?

	Say, for instance, that a church wants to buy services from a
small business -- say, catering services, event photography services, or
for that matter electrical repair work.  The business refuses, because
it disapproves of the church's religious views.  The church then sues on
the grounds that the business's actions violated state public
accommodation discrimination law (assume that, as the New Mexico Human
Rights Commission concluded, service businesses are generally covered
public accommodations).  May the business claim a First Amendment right
not to help -- through work (even fully compensated work) rather than
money -- in the dissemination of views that it disapproves of?

	Eugene


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