# United States v. United Foods, Inc.

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 25, 2001 · 533 U.S. 405

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434137

## Case

- **Full name:** UNITED STATES Et Al. v. UNITED FOODS, INC.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 25, 2001
- **Citations:** 533 U.S. 405; 121 S. Ct. 2334; 150 L. Ed. 2d 438; 2001 U.S. LEXIS 4904
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Stevens
- **Judges:** Kennedy, Rehnquist, Stevens, Scalia, Souter, Thomas, Breyer, Ginsburg, O'Connor
- **Cited by:** 241 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Disagreed with by Livestock Marketing Association v. United States Department Of Agriculture, 335 F.3d 711 (2003).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 2
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434137

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating that, even if commercial speech is less protected than other speech, there is "no basis under either Glickman or our other precedents to sustain the compelled assessments,” but refusing to consider "whether the Government's interest could be considered substantial for …
- holding that the First Amendment “may prevent the government from compelling individuals to express certain views or from compelling certain individuals to pay subsidies for speech to which they object.”
- holding that regulations forcing mushroom producers to fund generic advertising violated the First Amendment, even though they "[did] not compel the expression of political or ideological views”
- holding that a mandatory assessment imposed on mushroom producers to support advertising promoting general mushroom sales violated the producer’s First Amendment right against compelled speech
- applying “First Amendment scrutiny” where speech effects were not incidental and noting that “those whose business and livelihood depend in some way upon the product involved no doubt deem First Amendment protection to be just as important for them as it is for other discrete,…

## Opinion text

Justice Stevens,
concurring.
Justice Breyer has correctly noted that the program at issue in this case, like that in Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., 521 U. S. 457 (1997), “does not compel speech itself; it compels the payment of money.” Post, at 425 (dissenting opinion). This fact suffices to distinguish these compelled subsidies from the compelled speech in cases like West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943), and Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705 (1977). It does not follow, however, that the First Amendment is not implicated when a person is forced to subsidize speech to which he objects. Keller v. State Bar of Cal., 496 U. S. 1, 13-14 *418 (1990). As we held in Glickman, Keller, and a number of other eases, such a compelled subsidy is permissible when it is ancillary, or “germane,” to a valid cooperative endeavor. The incremental impact on the liberty of a person who has already surrendered far greater liberty to the collective entity (either voluntarily or as a result of permissible compulsion) does not, in my judgment, raise a significant constitutional issue if it is ancillary to the main purpose of the collective program.
This case, however, raises the open question whether such compulsion is constitutional when nothing more than commercial advertising is at stake. The naked imposition of such compulsion, like a naked restraint on speech itself, seems quite different to me. * We need not decide whether other interests, such as the health or artistic concerns mentioned by Justice Breyer, post, at 428, might justify a compelled subsidy like this, but surely the interest in making one entrepreneur finance advertising for the benefit of his competitors, including some who are not required to contribute, is insufficient.
The Court has held that the First Amendment is implicated by government regulation of contributions and expenditures for political purposes. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976) (per curiam). Although it by no means follows that the reasoning in such cases would apply to the regulation of expenditures for advertising, I think it clear that government compulsion to finance objectionable speech imposes a greater restraint on liberty than government regulation of money used to subsidize the speech of others. Even in the commercial speech context, I think it entirely proper for the Court to rely on the First Amendment when evaluating the significance of such compulsion.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434137. Public record. Not legal advice.