TOP COURT HANDS CONSERVATIVES VICTORIES

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court handed conservatives victories in a
raft of 5-to-4 rulings, demonstrating the far-ranging influence of
President Bush's two appointees. But the opinions, including closely
watched cases involving campaign-finance regulation and student free
speech, revealed fissures among the five conservative justices even as
the court's rightward tilt drove the four liberals together in unified
dissents.

Coming near the close of the first full term since the retirement of
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the decisions showed how the court is
pulling back on liberal precedents long disliked by conservatives, but
hasn't yet formed a consensus among the majority bloc on how, and how
far, to proceed.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who took office in 2005 with the aim of
producing fewer splintered opinions, failed to unite the conservatives
behind his reasoning in any of the three major cases decided yesterday.

The chief justice and Justice Samuel Alito paid some deference to the
precedents they were limiting, while Justices Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas called for their outright reversals.

At the same time, the developing Roberts Court has fostered unity
among its frustrated liberal bloc. The liberal justices have taken to
joining single dissents, rather than writing separately. Four times in
the past term, a liberal justice has read a dissent from the bench --
a gesture, in the court's refined choreography, displaying great
distress with a majority opinion. In yesterday's most wide-reaching
ruling, the court all but eliminated a key provision of the 2002
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act -- better known as McCain-Feingold,
after the senators who sponsored it -- opening up an additional source
of funds for the blizzard of political advertisements sure to precede
next year's election.

McCain-Feingold was designed to stop corporations and labor unions
using a loophole in election rules to fund political campaigns or
advertisements. To get around the restrictions, corporations and
unions ran advertisements ostensibly focusing on an "issue," critics
said, while implicitly urging a vote for a particular candidate.

Under the act, corporate-funded television ads couldn't mention a
specific candidate 30 days prior to a primary and 60 days before a
general election.

The court found that prohibition swept too far, abridging
corporations' First Amendment rights to voice political views.

But the five justices in the majority splintered over their
reasoning.

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito stopped short of invalidating
the entire provision, leaving in place a restriction on ads that could
have no other interpretation than "an appeal to vote for or against a
specific candidate." Neither the chief justice nor Justice Alito was
on the court in 2003, when it upheld most of the McCain-Feingold law.
The three justices who dissented from that ruling, Justice Scalia
joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy and Thomas, reiterated their view
that the restriction itself should be struck down. (Federal Election
Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life Inc.) The differences among the
conservatives were sharper in the free-speech case, in which a
high-school principal ripped down a banner hoisted by a student
outside the school that proclaimed "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS." The student
asserted it was an absurdist statement intended to draw television
cameras, there to cover the Olympic torch relay as it passed through.
The principal said the message promoted illegal drug use. In a 1969
case known as Tinker v. Des Moines, the court barred a school from
punishing students who wore black armbands in protest of the Vietnam
War. Writing for the court, Chief Justice Roberts repeated Tinker's
finding that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to
freedom of speech...at the schoolhouse gate." But the chief justice
said the First Amendment must give way when that speech "is reasonably
viewed as promoting illegal drug use." Justice Alito joined that
opinion, but appeared troubled by the suppression of speech.

In a separate opinion joined by Justice Kennedy, he explicitly
rejected the government's broad argument that schools could silence
speech authorities deemed as interfering with the "educational
mission." He wrote that the ruling went to "the far reaches of what
the First Amendment permits," and stressed that it shouldn't be read
to allow suppression of any speech "commenting on any political or
social issue," including the "wisdom of the war on drugs" or
"legalizing marijuana for medical use." Justice Thomas also joined the
majority, but wrote separately to urge that Tinker be overruled. "As
originally understood, the Constitution does not afford students a
right to free speech in public schools," he wrote.

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote separately to say that the principal
should be permitted to tear down 14-foot banners, regardless of the
content, and thus avoid a First Amendment problem.

Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justices David Souter and Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, dissented.

The student's "nonsense" message could hardly be considered likely to
turn the student body into drug users. "Most students...do not shed
their brains at the schoolhouse gate," he wrote. (Morse v. Frederick)

The court's third decision also implicated the First Amendment,
denying taxpayers standing to sue the Executive Branch for violating
the prohibition on "an establishment of religion." In general,
taxpayers have no right to sue against government actions unless they
can show they are directly harmed by them. In the 1968 case Flast v.
Cohen, the court made an exception in a case involving the
Establishment Clause, which defines the separation of church and state.

Yesterday, the court ruled that exception didn't cover actions of the
Executive Branch -- specifically, President Bush's "faith-based"
campaign to encourage religious groups to seek federal funding for
social programs.

While the five conservatives agreed in the result, no single opinion
could muster enough votes to speak for the court as a whole. "We do
not extend Flast, but we also do not overrule it," wrote Justice
Alito, joined by the chief justice and Justice Kennedy. Justice
Kennedy wrote separately to explain his concern that such lawsuits
could lead to "constant intrusion" by the courts into Executive Branch
actions.

In dissent, Justice Souter wrote that it made no sense to allow
taxpayer suits against congressional spending, but not that of the
president.

(Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation Inc.) --Christopher Cooper
contributed to this article.