Cite as: 530 U. S. 567 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
may regulate freely.4 To the contrary, we have continually stressed that when States regulate parties' internal processes they must act within limits imposed by the Constitution. See, e. g., Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Central Comm., 489 U. S. 214 (1989); Democratic Party of United States v. Wisconsin ex rel. La Follette, 450 U. S. 107 (1981). In this regard, respondents' reliance on Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649 (1944), and Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S. 461 (1953), is misplaced. In Allwright, we invalidated the Texas Democratic Party's rule limiting participation in its primary to whites; in Terry, we invalidated the same rule promulgated by the Jaybird Democratic Association, a "self-governing voluntary club," 345 U. S., at 463. These cases held only that, when a State prescribes an election process that gives a special role to political parties, it "endorses, adopts and enforces the discrimination against Negroes" that the parties (or, in the case of the Jaybird Democratic Association, organizations that are "part and parcel" of the parties, see id., at 482 (Clark, J., concurring)) bring into the process—so that the parties' discriminatory action becomes state action under the Fifteenth Amendment. Allwright, supra, at 664; see also Terry, 345 U. S., at 484 (Clark, J., concurring); id., at 469 (opinion of Black, J.). They do not stand for the proposition that party affairs are public affairs, free of First Amendment protections—and our later holdings make that entirely clear.5 See, e. g., Tashjian, supra.
4 On this point, the dissent shares respondents' view, at least where the selection process is a state-run election. The right not to associate, it says, "is simply inapplicable to participation in a state election." "[A]n election, unlike a convention or caucus, is a public affair." Post, at 595 (opinion of Stevens, J.). Of course it is, but when the election determines a party's nominee it is a party affair as well, and, as the cases to be discussed in text demonstrate, the constitutional rights of those composing the party cannot be disregarded.
5 The dissent is therefore wrong to conclude that Allwright and Terry demonstrate that "[t]he protections that the First Amendment affords
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