Roberts’s Liberal Ruling Will Protect Conservatives

June 20 (Bloomberg) -- If you pay the piper, you get tocall the tune. The U.S. Supreme Court undercut that traditionalconservative First Amendment principle today in Agency forInternational Development v. Alliance for Open SocietyInternational, striking down a law that required recipients offederal funding for AIDS prevention abroad to have a policyopposing prostitution. In a 6-2 decision, Chief Justice JohnRoberts wrote that though the government can decide what speechit wants to fund, it can’t condition funding on making you saysomething outside the scope of the program being funded.

Roberts’s vote -- and Samuel Alito’s alongside his -- showhow sharply the ideological lines on free speech have changed.Stay up late at No. 1 First Street NE tonight: The ghost ofRoberts’s predecessor, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, will bewalking the ramparts, wondering how his former law clerk couldhave poured the poison in his ear.