612
Souter, J., dissenting
but by recognizing a new category by analogy to those accepted ones. The analogy is, however, a very poor fit, and this patronage falls embarrassingly on the wrong side of the line between government-as-buyer or -speaker and government-as-regulator-of-private-speech.
The division is reflected quite clearly in our precedents. Drawing on the notion of government-as-speaker, we held in Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S., at 194, that the Government was entitled to appropriate public funds for the promotion of particular choices among alternatives offered by health and social service providers (e. g., family planning with, and without, resort to abortion). When the government promotes a particular governmental program, "it is entitled to define the limits of that program," and to dictate the viewpoint expressed by speakers who are paid to participate in it. Ibid.7 But we added the important qualifying language that "[t]his is not to suggest that funding by the Government, even when coupled with the freedom of the fund recipients to speak outside the scope of the Government-funded project, is invariably sufficient to justify Government control over the content of expression." Id., at 199. Indeed, outside of the contexts of government-as-buyer and government-as-speaker, we have held time and time again that Congress may not "dis-criminate invidiously in its subsidies in such a way as to aim at the suppression of . . . ideas." Regan v. Taxation with Representation of Wash., 461 U. S. 540, 548 (1983) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted); see also Lamb's Chapel, 508 U. S., at 394 (when the government subsidizes private speech, it may not "favor some viewpoints or ideas at the expense of others"); Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc., 327
7 In Rust, "the government did not create a program to encourage private speech but instead used private speakers to transmit specific information pertaining to its own program. We recognized that when the government appropriates public funds to promote a particular policy of its own it is entitled to say what it wishes." Rosenberger, supra, at 833 (citing Rust, supra, at 194).
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