## Facts

- Congress enacted the Beef Promotion and Research Act of 1985, creating a national program to promote beef and imposing a mandatory assessment on cattle sales and imports (“checkoff”).
- The Secretary of Agriculture implemented the program through an order creating the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board and an Operating Committee to administer promotions.
- Checkoff funds paid for generic beef advertising and related promotional campaigns.
- Cattle producers and associations subject to the assessment objected to being required to fund the advertising and filed a First Amendment challenge.
- The federal district court held the Act and order unconstitutional as compelled subsidization of objectionable speech, and the Eighth Circuit affirmed.
- The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

## Issues

1. Whether advertising funded by the mandatory beef checkoff constitutes government speech or private speech for First Amendment purposes.
2. Whether a compelled assessment to fund such advertising violates the First Amendment rights of objecting producers under the compelled-subsidy doctrine.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed.
- The Court held that the beef checkoff financed the government’s own speech and therefore was not subject to a First Amendment compelled-subsidy challenge.
- The Court concluded the promotional message was “effectively controlled” by the federal government, including through the Secretary’s appointment and removal authority and final approval over campaign content.
- The Court rejected the view that compelled funding of government speech is itself a First Amendment violation, reasoning that compulsory payments routinely finance official communications.

## Legal Principles

- Compelled support of government speech is treated differently from compelled support of private speech; the compelled-subsidy line of cases principally concerns private speech.
- Speech is more likely to be classified as government speech when a politically accountable official sets the overarching message and retains final approval authority over the content.
- When a program’s communications are government speech, objectors’ First Amendment remedy is primarily political rather than judicial, absent an independent constitutional constraint.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld the mandatory beef checkoff because the promotional campaigns were government speech controlled by the Secretary of Agriculture, placing the compelled assessment outside the First Amendment’s compelled-subsidy restrictions that apply to private speech.


Johanns v. Livestock Mktg. Ass'n, 544 U.S. 550 (2005)