Following up on this post an astute reader points me to this written response to a Senator’s question:
- Do you agree that if Hastings has denied an associational freedom to a religious student group that it has granted to other groups, such a denial would be presumptively unconstitutional?
Response:
I do not think it would be appropriate for me to comment on a recent decision of the Supreme Court. As a general matter, I continue to believe that the First Amendment generally prohibits the government from subsidizing some points of view but not others; the example I gave in the article was a law providing for public funding of all speech endorsing incumbent city officials in reelection campaigns.
The reader asks ” how this might relate to her view of Arizona’s matching funds case. While obviously the Arizona law does not just provide public funding for speech endorsing incumbents, I wonder how far she would take that view when examining the Arizona public financing matching-funds law (which may end up subsidizing only one point of view in a given race).”
I don’t see the Arizona system as subsidizing only one “point of view,” but it does only subsidize one class of candidates: those who opt into the public financing system and then face large opponent or third party spending. Still, the answer does raise the question of how she would vote in McComish should the Court take that case.