Charity Drive’s Bar to Advocacy Groups Upheld

WASHINGTON —  Legal and political advocacy groups may be barred from receiving shares of donations to the annual charity drive among the federal government’s 4 million civilian and military employees, the Supreme Court ruled today.

By a 4-3 vote, the justices reversed a lower court’s ruling that forced the government to include such groups--as diverse as the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People’s Defense and Educational Fund and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

The decision is a victory for the Reagan Administration, which appealed the lower court ruling. It also represents a multimillion-dollar loss to groups that had sought access to the charity drive.

“The President could reasonably conclude,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the court, “that a dollar directly spent on providing food or shelter to the needy is more beneficial than a dollar spent on litigation that might or might not result in aid to the needy.”

‘Non-Public Forum’

Ruling that the federal charity drive--called the Combined Federal Campaign--is a “non-public forum,” the court said barring a group’s access to such a forum need only be reasonable--not the most reasonable or only reasonable limitation.

A wide array of legal and political advocacy groups had contended that barring their participation as recipients in the charity drive stifled their free-speech rights protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment.