The Supreme Court today upheld those ad campaigns run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (such as Got Milk?), which force all producers of a given product (beef, pork, or dairy, for example) to contribute, even if they disagree with the message. Scalia wrote the opinion. The issue apparently was whether or not the campaigns’ messages are dictated by the U.S.D.A. or a private entity. The latter would have been unconstitutional. The former is apparently okay. And the court found that it’s the former.

Now is probably a good time to note that a Supreme Court ruling declaring a policy constitutional doesn’t mean that said policy is wise or desirable. I’d submit that a Dept. of Agriculture ad campaign which extorts money from farmers to fund commercials that encourage taxpayers to eat U.S. agriculture is neither wise nor desirable.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 23rd, 2005 at 11:28 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.