A U.S. Supreme Court ruling about students’ First Amendment rights has Government of the Student Body officials worried about whether the group’s bylaws comply with the ruling.

The ruling states student fee funding at a public university be done in a viewpoint-neutral manner. GSB officials will vote to change the wording of a bylaw at its next meeting so it is viewpoint neutral. The bylaw states “organizations must provide a broad, tangible benefit to the university.”

In the 1996 Supreme Court case The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin v. Southworth, students who sued the university said imposing an involuntary student fee to fund student groups whose speech and viewpoints were against their personal beliefs was a violation of their First Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the University of Wisconsin, saying it is inevitable student fees will subsidize speech some students find objectionable. The University of Wisconsin’s purpose is to facilitate the free and open exchange of ideas by and among its students, the ruling stated.

The court also said the university does have to make some attempt to protect students’ First Amendment rights by requiring a viewpoint of neutrality when allocating funds.

With viewpoint neutrality, procedural protections are to be in place so the university and student body can’t discriminate funding to groups based on the group’s viewpoint.

This neutrality would not allow one viewpoint to be expressed and others excluded.

GSB officials believe the “broad and tangible” clause in its bylaw is too vague, allowing for interpretation that could contradict the court’s viewpoint neutrality stipulation.

“[The bylaw] is open to interpretation and could be used in a biased manner,” said Andrew Tugan, liberal arts and sciences senator.

Tugan said objections to funding Cuffs prompted his bill. GSB could have decided not to fund the group based on its interpretation of broad and tangible benefit, he said. The decision could have been argued as being biased and lacked the courts mandated viewpoint on neutrality, Tugan said.

However, Paul Tanaka, legal counsel to Iowa State University, said the bylaw and GSB funding procedures are not illegal or in contradiction with the ruling.

“I think the policy as it stands is defensible,” he said. Tanaka said the bylaw doesn’t avoid viewpoint neutrality because it doesn’t stipulate a certain group’s viewpoint not be funded, be it religious or political.

He said the issue is whether GSB’s funding procedures and bylaws should allow it to use discretion in funding groups regardless of their viewpoint.

“Does viewpoint neutrality mean the government has to fund any and all viewpoints? Essentially, it can be interpreted that way. What does viewpoint-neutral mean? It’s just as vague as the ‘broad and tangible benefit’ clause,” Tanaka said.

“It’s almost like a catch-22 because if you’re going to allocate funds to groups, you have to do that in a viewpoint-neutral manner. But, on the other hand, they’re saying maybe we shouldn’t require people to pay funds to organizations whose viewpoints they disagree with, so let’s put this viewpoint-neutral clause in as a protection to their First Amendment rights.”

GSB Finance Director David Boike said he is hesitant to change the bylaw because it is unclear what “viewpoint neutrality” means.

“Students need to be able to see the benefit of their money, and that’s why the ‘broad and tangible benefit’ clause is in there,” Boike said. “There’s no way to make it explicit. This bylaw guides GSB to have discretion and prevent it from investing in an unwise usage of student fee money.”

He said rewriting the bylaw would be contrary to GSB’s responsibility of deciding if student groups should receive funding, and would be shirking itself of its responsibility to interpret its own bylaws.

“There will always have to be some confusion because there needs to subjectivity and interpretation. If there wasn’t, there wouldn’t be a senate; there would just be a flow chart for whether groups get funded,” Boike said. “To rewrite it this way would let any group that meets funding criteria to be funded. We couldn’t not fund any group because that would discriminate against their viewpoint — who cares whether the group will benefit students or not.”