694
Stevens, J., dissenting
or viewpoint-based exclusions from political debates militates strongly in favor of requiring the controlling state agency to use (and adhere to) preestablished, objective criteria to determine who among qualified candidates may participate. When the demand for speaking facilities exceeds supply, the State must "ration or allocate the scarce resources on some acceptable neutral principle." Rosenberger, 515 U. S., at 835. A constitutional duty to use objective standards—i. e., "neutral principles"—for determining whether and when to adjust a debate format would impose only a modest requirement that would fall far short of a duty to grant every multiple-party request.19 Such standards would also have the benefit of providing the public with some assurance that state-owned broadcasters cannot select debate participants on arbitrary grounds.20
Like the Court, I do not endorse the view of the Court of Appeals that all candidates who qualify for a position on the ballot are necessarily entitled to access to any state-sponsored debate. I am convinced, however, that the constitutional imperatives that motivated our decisions in cases like Shuttlesworth command that access to political debates
explains that "[a] designated public forum is not created when the government allows selective access for individual speakers rather than general access for a class of speakers." Ante, at 679. If, as AETC claims, it did invite either the entire class of "viable" candidates, or the entire class of "newsworthy" candidates, under the Court's reasoning, it created a designated public forum.
19 The Court expresses concern that as a direct result of the Court of Appeals' holding that all ballot-qualified candidates have a right to participate in every debate, a state-owned network canceled a 1996 Nebraska debate. Ante, at 681. If the Nebraska station had realized that it could have satisfied its First Amendment obligations simply by setting out participation standards before the debate, however, it seems quite unlikely that it would have chosen instead to cancel the debate.
20 The fact that AETC and other state-owned networks have adopted policy statements emphasizing the importance of shielding programming decisions from political influence, see ante, at 670, confirms the significance of the risk that would be minimized by the adoption of objective criteria.
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