SUPREME
COURT TO HEAR ARGUMENTS OVER MANDATORY STUDENT ACTIVITY FEES
On November 9, 1999,
the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments about whether university students
can be forced to pay fees that are used to fund campus groups whose political
goals the students oppose.
At the University
of Wisconsin, 40,000 students must support these groups through a mandatory
student activities fee. At $165 a semester per student, these fees amount
to more than $1 million dollars a year. Wisconsin's student government
allocates part of the money to various groups.
In 1996, a law student
filed a lawsuit challenging these fees. A federal trial judge and the
7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, finding that the
subsidies unlawfully force students to subsidize views they find objectionable.
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