{
  "id": "R43027",
  "type": "CRS Report",
  "typeId": "REPORTS",
  "number": "R43027",
  "active": false,
  "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
  "versions": [
    {
      "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
      "id": 422173,
      "date": "2013-07-03",
      "retrieved": "2016-04-06T23:21:56.736306",
      "title": "Restrictions on the Speech of Recipients of Federal Funds Under the Leadership Act of 2003: United States Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society ",
      "summary": "Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution provides Congress with the explicit power to collect taxes. Implicit in that power to collect revenue is also the power to spend that revenue. This clause is known as the Taxing and Spending Clause of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has found that it grants Congress wide latitude to promote social policy that the federal government supports. \nOne way that Congress may exercise its spending power to encourage the implementation of policies that the federal government supports is through appropriations. One common example of Congress exercising spending power to impose its will is the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984. That act conditioned the receipt of a percentage of federal highway funding on states agreeing to raise the minimum drinking age to 21. While states were not required by the act to raise the drinking age, they could not receive the funds if they did not.\nCongress has wide discretion to provide subsidies to activities that it supports without incurring the constitutional obligation to also provide a subsidy to activities that it does not necessarily encourage. However, the power to spend money only on policies that Congress supports is not without limits. Congress may not place what have come to be known as \u201cunconstitutional conditions\u201d on the receipt of federal funds. Which conditions on the receipt of federal funds are and are not constitutional is a longstanding question with somewhat unclear answers, particularly when it comes to conditions placed upon the speech of the recipients of federal funds. To what extent may the federal government prevent recipients of federal funds from using that money to communicate a message that may not be supported by the federal government? To what extent may the federal government require fund recipients to espouse a particular point of view as a condition upon the receipt of funds? Courts have struggled with these issues time and again.\nMost recently, the Supreme Court heard a case challenging the constitutionality of a provision of the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003 (Leadership Act). The relevant provision prohibited the government from making funds available to grant recipients that do not have a policy of opposing prostitution. The question facing the Court in this case was whether the Leadership Act\u2019s requirement that recipients affirmatively adopt a policy that applied to the entire organization, and not just to the federal funds received, violated the First Amendment. The Supreme Court decided that the requirement is unconstitutional and struck it down in an opinion released on June 20, 2013. The case makes it clear that, while the government has wide latitude to control the message conveyed with federal dollars within a federal program, the First Amendment prohibits the government from controlling speech outside the federal program.",
      "type": "CRS Report",
      "typeId": "REPORTS",
      "active": false,
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          "url": "http://www.crs.gov/Reports/R43027",
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      "topics": [
        {
          "source": "IBCList",
          "id": 3362,
          "name": "First Amendment: Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Appropriations",
    "Constitutional Questions"
  ]
}