586
Opinion of the Court
cates for the Arts v. Thomson, 532 F. 2d 792, 795-796 (CA1), cert. denied, 429 U. S. 894 (1976).
Respondents' reliance on our decision in Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819 (1995), is therefore misplaced. In Rosenberger, a public university declined to authorize disbursements from its Student Activities Fund to finance the printing of a Christian student newspaper. We held that by subsidizing the Student Activities Fund, the University had created a limited public forum, from which it impermissibly excluded all publications with religious editorial viewpoints. Id., at 837. Although the scarcity of NEA funding does not distinguish this case from Rosenberger, see id., at 835, the competitive process according to which the grants are allocated does. In the context of arts funding, in contrast to many other subsidies, the Government does not indiscriminately "encourage a diversity of views from private speakers," id., at 834. The NEA's mandate is to make esthetic judgments, and the inherently content-based "excellence" threshold for NEA support sets it apart from the subsidy at issue in Rosenberger—which was available to all student organizations that were " 'related to the educational purpose of the University,' " id., at 824—and from comparably objective decisions on allocating public benefits, such as access to a school auditorium or a municipal theater, see Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. 384, 386 (1993); Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U. S. 546, 555 (1975), or the second class mailing privileges available to " 'all newspapers and other periodical publications,' " see Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc., 327 U. S. 146, 148, n. 1 (1946).
Respondents do not allege discrimination in any particular funding decision. (In fact, after filing suit to challenge § 954(d)(1), two of the individual respondents received NEA grants. See 4 Record, Doc. No. 57, Exh. 35 (Sept. 30, 1991, letters from the NEA informing respondents Hughes and Miller that they had been awarded Solo Performance The-
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