482
Souter, J., dissenting
undertaken by private and quasi-private organizations.2 We first considered this issue in Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U. S. 209 (1977), in addressing the First Amendment claims of dissenting employees subject to an "agency-shop" agreement between their government employer and a union. The agreement required each employee to pay the union a "service fee" equal to the dues required of union members, but limited no one's right to speak separately and obliged no employee to join the union, personally espouse unionism, or participate in the union in any other way. Id., at 212. Thus, as in this case, the sole imposition upon nonmembers was the assessment to help pay for the union's activities. And yet, purely financial as the imposition was, we held that the union's use of dissenters' service fees for expressive purposes unrelated to collective bargaining violated the First Amendment rights of those employees. In so holding, Abood drew together several lines of First Amendment doctrine; after recognizing the parallels between expression per se and associating for expressive purposes, id., at 233-234, the Court relied on compelled-speech cases such as Barnette, supra, in concluding that just as the government may not (without a compelling reason) prohibit a person from contributing money to propagate ideas, neither may it force an individual to contribute money to support some group's distinctly expressive activities, id., at 234-235. We have repeatedly adhered to this reasoning in cases of compelled contributions to unions in agency shops, see, e. g., Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Assn., 500 U. S. 507 (1991); Teachers v. Hudson, 475 U. S. 292 (1986); Ellis v. Railway Clerks, 466 U. S.
2 The Secretary of Agriculture does not argue that the advertisements at issue represent so-called "government speech," with respect to which the Government may have greater latitude in selecting content than otherwise permissible under the First Amendment, see Keller v. State Bar of Cal., 496 U. S. 1, 10-13 (1990); Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U. S. 209, 259, n. 13 (1977) (Powell, J., concurring in judgment). See Brief for Petitioner 25, n. 16 (waiving argument).
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