622
Souter, J., dissenting
States. Because the NEA provides much of its support with conditions that require matching or co-funding from private sources, the NEA's funding involvement in a project necessarily has a multiplier effect in the competitive market for funding of artistic endeavors. . . . [In addition,] most non-federal funding sources regard the NEA award as an imprimatur that signifies the recipient's artistic merit and value. NEA grants lend prestige and legitimacy to projects and are therefore critical to the ability of artists and companies to attract non-federal funding sources. Grant applicants rely on the NEA well beyond the dollar value of any particular grant." Bella Lewitzky Dance Foundation v. Frohn-mayer, 754 F. Supp. 774, 783 (CD Cal. 1991) (footnote and internal quotation marks omitted).16
Since the decency and respect proviso of § 954(d)(1) is substantially overbroad and carries with it a significant power to chill artistic production and display, it should be struck down on its face.17
16 See also, e. g., 131 Cong. Rec. 24808 (1985) ("[S]upport from the Endowmen[t] has always represented a 'Good Housekeeping Seal' of approval which has helped grantees generate non-Federal dollars for projects and productions").
17 I agree with the Court that § 954(d) is not unconstitutionally vague. Any chilling that results from imprecision in the drafting of standards (such as "artistic excellence and artistic merit") by which the Government awards scarce grants and scholarships is an inevitable and permissible consequence of distributing prizes on the basis of criteria dealing with a subject that defies exactness. The necessary imprecision of artistic-merit-based criteria justifies tolerating a degree of vagueness that might be intolerable when applying the First Amendment to attempts to regulate political discussion. Cf. Arkansas Ed. Television Comm'n v. Forbes, 523 U. S. 666, 694-695 (1998) (Stevens, J., dissenting). My problem is not with the chilling that may naturally result from necessarily open standards; it is with the unacceptable chilling of "dangerous ideas," Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513, 519 (1958), that naturally results from explicitly viewpoint-based standards.
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