quote:WASHINGTON -- The government can make cattle ranchers pay for ads proclaiming "Beef: It's what's for dinner," the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
Some ranchers object to paying for the ad campaigns because they don't like the generic message that all beef _ American or foreign _ is good. But the court ruled in a 6-3 decision that the beef program amounts to government speech that is shielded from First Amendment challenge.
The government is allowed to promote its own message and compel producers to pay fees, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.
"The message of the promotional campaigns is effectively controlled by the Federal Government itself," Scalia wrote in an opinion joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas and Stephen G. Breyer.
The agriculture secretary, a public official, controls the program, appoints and dismisses key personnel and has "absolute veto power" over the ads, even when it comes to their wording, Scalia wrote.
At issue is a program passed by Congress in 1985 requiring cattle producers to pay $1 for every head of cattle sold in the United States for industry advertising and research.
The Agriculture Department collects the "checkoff" fees, which total more than $80 million annually, and distributes the money to an industry group appointed by the department to run the program.
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In a dissenting opinion, Justice David H. Souter argued that the beef campaigns are not government speech. If the government wants to use targeted taxes to fund speech, it must be accountable for indicating the speech is a government message, he wrote.
"No one hearing a commercial for Pepsi or Levi's thinks Uncle Sam is the man talking behind the curtain. Why would a person reading a beef ad think Uncle Sam was trying to make him eat more steak?" Souter wrote in a dissent joined by Justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony Kennedy.
Without delving into the actual constitutionality of the policy (I confess I haven't done the research to form a cogent legal opinion), I think the dissent's logic is compelling from a policy perspective.
Besides my general distaste for the concept of government funding of purely expressive activities and desire for strong justifications for such funding, this case seems particularly egregious, because the levy is specifically taken for this purpose. It's different when you can identify the actual dollar going to the objected-to speech.
Dagonee P.S., that's as strange a justice lineup as I've seen in a long time.
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I agree completely with Souter's dissent, FWIW. And, like Dag, am really baffled by the way the judges fell this time around.
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I'm not sure what you mean by "purely expressive." What comes to mind is government funding of art (which is purely expressive and may also not tie into anything else -- like commercial speech -- whereas things like promotion of an industry or trade do have this "other" aspect.)
I agree, however, that the dissent's logic (what I read here) makes more sense to me than the majority opinion. I also don't know why the US government would be needed to promote something like this. Surely beef producers and marketers would be able to promote their own product without the government having to do it for them...
How did this even get started? Why would the government take on the role of promoting any particular food or product?
And if there IS a logical reason for it to do so, why wouldn't we want that message to be clearly tagged as official US government communication?
Aren't we already having problems with Gov't agencies crafting their policy marketing as "news?" Why is this instance any better or different?
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Well, it's an interesting assumption that news is a higher standard of truth than government agency policy. Though it seems like whenever the FDA announces what kind of ethnic restaurant you're not supposed to eat at now, it's on the news. Unless they are making even more pronouncements than are on the news- a concept I find improbable.
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I had no idea that the government not only ran ads for beef but also compelled ranchers to pay for them. Do people know if there is more to the story or is that really it? If so, it seems very strange to me. What interest is the government serving by these actions?
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Speaking of strangeness, mt, when has the FDA announced that you're not supposed to eat at ethnic restaraunts? I've never heard of that either.
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mothertree...I was referring to the concoction of fake news stories then delivered by journalists in the employ of the US government agencies who then package the stories as legitimate "news" rather than as a press release by those agencies.
It's using taxpayer dollars to create propaganda, IMHO.
I don't really see how this is that much different, and yet the majority opinion of the Supreme Court says it is A-Okay.
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As I understand it, the majority opinion of the Supreme Court says it is not unconstitutional. That's hardly the same as A-OK. To pick a totally absurd example, the Constitution probably does not forbid using nuclear weapons on secessionists. Basically, the SC is saying "we don't have the power to fix this, it's up to Congress".
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KoM, the problem is that the Court has ruled that it's constitutional to require anyone in a given business to pay for speech advocating a position with which they may not agree. The sad thing is that I'm not sure this is without precedent. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Well, in the broad sense, the government uses my tax "contributions" in myriad ways that I disagree with. I suppose the fact that they do it with an industry-specific fee isn't all that special a circumstance.
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Some of the "ads" are better than others. I'm inclined to agree with the majority on this, because promoting healthy foods won't hurt the majority of Americans. If obesity is actually becoming more of a problem, then educating people about their dietary habits should become a key part of combating the problem. I heard an ad on the radio the other day touting all the nutritional benefits of some animal (beef? poultry?), and I thought, "Wow, I didn't know that." I guess the educational content of the messages could be useful.
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quote:I'm not sure what you mean by "purely expressive." What comes to mind is government funding of art (which is purely expressive and may also not tie into anything else -- like commercial speech -- whereas things like promotion of an industry or trade do have this "other" aspect.)
I'm very suspicious of government funding of purely expressive activity, especially by private entities, mainly because with finite reosurces, choices about which expression should be funded must be made. And the temptation to base those choices on the content of the expression is almost overwhelming to government agencies. So you get a lot of First Amendment problems.
It gets stickier when the speech is to further a government policy. For example, warning people about an evacuation is expression, but with a clear purpose almost everyone would agree is proper government function. I don't pretend there are nice categories; it's a continuum. Things like the NEA or PBS are at one end and evacuation orders are at the other.
quote:Do people know if there is more to the story or is that really it? If so, it seems very strange to me. What interest is the government serving by these actions?
As far as I know, the Post article is pretty complete. The $1 per head is used for more than these ads, but it's not a safety or health program. It's a business promotion program.
If we grant this expression serves a government function, then we need to analyze the purpose of that function and whether it is an appropriate aim of government. I wonder why it is, myself.
First, it does serve to commoditize beef. Now, I pretty much consider beef a commodity myself. But apparantly some ranchers want to differentiate their brands and think this makes it harder.
Second, unless we think that the increase in per-capita beef consumption is an addition to the daily calorie intake of the average person (who knows, but I doubt it all is), this benefit to the beef industry came at the expense of some other food industry. Why should the government play favorites? Apparantly, there's a similar program for milk, pork, and poultry. What's the point?
quote:As I understand it, the majority opinion of the Supreme Court says it is not unconstitutional. That's hardly the same as A-OK.
A distinction I often attempt to make (and, in fact, made in my initial post). For a good example of this principle in action, see Thomas's dissent in Lawrence.
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