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First Amendment "Beefs": Agricultural Checkoff Programs And Freedom Of Speech, Sarah A. Vaughn

CUREJ - College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal

In the past fourteen years, the Supreme Court has ruled three separate times on the constitutionality of Federal Farm Promotion Programs under the First Amendment. The challenge has been that the programs, which fund generic advertisements such as “Got Milk?” and “Beef: It’s What’s For Dinner,” compel the subsidization of objectionable speech from private producers. The answers handed down from the Court have been conflicting, but each has contributed to the new, still-emerging “government speech doctrine.” In the most recent case, Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association (2005), the Court ruled that the speech in question was completely governmental ...