Wisconsin Student Fee Setup Is Illegal

A federal judge ruled Friday that the way the University of Wisconsin System distributes student fees to fund campus organizations is unconstitutional because it has no guarantee that the funding decisions are viewpoint neutral.

The ruling came eight months after the U.S. Supreme Court approved of the mandatory fees themselves but sent the case back to the lower court to examine the distribution method.

In his ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge John C. Shabaz gave the university 60 days to come up with a constitutional procedure.

The university system’s 13 campuses now designate a portion of student fees for funding campus organizations. The student governments decide who gets the money, though each campus’ chancellor can veto their choices.

There are few requirements for the process, other than it must be done democratically and with student input.

Shabaz said the university’s guidelines do not guarantee that the decisions about who gets the money are viewpoint neutral, a requirement set down by the Supreme Court.

He said students become government officials when they decide how to distribute the fees, and as such have too much discretion.

“The danger is at its zenith when the determination of who may speak and who may not is left to a government official,” he said after ruling from the bench.

The Supreme Court upheld the university’s mandatory fees in March, ruling it was constitutional as long as funding decisions were not based on the student groups’ ideologies. But it sent part of the case back to district court in Madison, ruling that the way the university distributed the money could be problematic.

Some students had wanted the university either to establish minimum standards for a group to receive funds or to let students withhold their money from groups they found objectionable.

Former UW-Madison student Scott Southworth, who brought the original suit in 1996, supports an option to withhold.

“It’s a simple, straightforward mechanism that would end this case in February, when we come back to court,” he said. “It’s time for the Board of Regents to step up and do the right thing.”

But Jessica Miller, a UW-Madison junior on the student government board that distributes student fee money, said Shabaz’s decision was disappointing. She said the current system helps create an open forum for students to express themselves.

“It allows for every idea to be debated and discussed,” Miller said. “Any system that wouldn’t do that very strongly and have that as its main mission would not be a benefit to students at all.”

Peter Anderson, who argued the case for the university, said the school could still collect the fee in January for the upcoming semester. He said it was too early to decide whether to appeal.

University officials said they were still reviewing the case Friday and could not comment.