Members of the Trump administration love to say that federal funding is a privilege not a right and therefore something that can be granted or withheld based on changing administrative priorities.
Well written and well argued! I would be interested in further discussion of the implications of the President attempting to impose conditions on funding like this unilaterally, rather than Congress doing so. Funding is a legislative power, not an executive power, and it doesn't seem to me that the president has any legal authority at all to impose these sorts of conditions on recipients. It would depend on the details of how the appropriations bills are written. But the executive declining to spend funds that have been appropriated by Congress, aside from the constitutional barriers to this sort of action from any element of the government, also raises separation of powers and take care clause issues.
It is truly remarkable to see the unconstitutional conditions doctrine being used by a university to shield themselves from the very funding leverage they already embraced. These conditions were imposed upon the students long ago during the RTTT push, then normalized without a whisper of concern for the doctrine. When FERPA was gutted, there was no invocation of First Amendment protections for the students. Universities complied and imposed those conditions downwards, with even less transparency. This sudden appeal to constitutional limits is difficult to take seriously when it has been operating like this against students for years already. The principle has not changed, only who feels targeted by it. And now, suddenly, it matters.
They let unconstitutional conditions doctrine rot while students were coerced into data compliance, IP surrender, speech modulation, behavioral profiling, AI research programs, and now, when the pressure flips upstream, they want to wrap themselves in constitutional fabric like it wasn’t already shredded by their own hands. It is not just hypocrisy; it is performative legalism rolled out only when the institutions themselves are inconvenienced.
The doctrine seeks to compel the federal government to subsidize speech it abhors. Doesn’t the government (and of course we unwashed voters/taxpayers) have a say?
Well written and well argued! I would be interested in further discussion of the implications of the President attempting to impose conditions on funding like this unilaterally, rather than Congress doing so. Funding is a legislative power, not an executive power, and it doesn't seem to me that the president has any legal authority at all to impose these sorts of conditions on recipients. It would depend on the details of how the appropriations bills are written. But the executive declining to spend funds that have been appropriated by Congress, aside from the constitutional barriers to this sort of action from any element of the government, also raises separation of powers and take care clause issues.
It is truly remarkable to see the unconstitutional conditions doctrine being used by a university to shield themselves from the very funding leverage they already embraced. These conditions were imposed upon the students long ago during the RTTT push, then normalized without a whisper of concern for the doctrine. When FERPA was gutted, there was no invocation of First Amendment protections for the students. Universities complied and imposed those conditions downwards, with even less transparency. This sudden appeal to constitutional limits is difficult to take seriously when it has been operating like this against students for years already. The principle has not changed, only who feels targeted by it. And now, suddenly, it matters.
They let unconstitutional conditions doctrine rot while students were coerced into data compliance, IP surrender, speech modulation, behavioral profiling, AI research programs, and now, when the pressure flips upstream, they want to wrap themselves in constitutional fabric like it wasn’t already shredded by their own hands. It is not just hypocrisy; it is performative legalism rolled out only when the institutions themselves are inconvenienced.
The doctrine seeks to compel the federal government to subsidize speech it abhors. Doesn’t the government (and of course we unwashed voters/taxpayers) have a say?