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“It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the ‘liberty’ assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech. . . . Of course, it is immaterial whether the beliefs sought to be advanced by association pertain to political, economic, religious or cultural matters, and state action which may have the effect of curtailing the freedom to associate is subject to the closest scrutiny.”601 It appears from the Court’s opinions that the right of association is derivative from the First Amendment guarantees of speech, assembly, and petition,602 although it has at times been referred to as an independent freedom protected by the First Amendment.603 The doctrine is a fairly recent construction, the problems associated with it having previously arisen primarily in the context of loyalty-security investigations of Communist Party membership, and these cases having been resolved without giving rise to any separate theory of association.604
Freedom of association as a concept thus grew out of a series of cases in the 1950s and 1960s in which certain states were attempting to curb the activities of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In the first case, the Court unanimously set aside a contempt citation imposed after the organization refused to comply with a court order to produce a list of its members within the state. “Effective advocacy of both public and private points of view, particularly controversial ones, is undeniably enhanced by group association, as this Court has more than once recognized by remarking upon the close nexus between the freedoms of speech and assembly.”605 “[T]hese indispensable liberties, whether of speech, press, or association,”606 may be abridged by governmental action either directly or indirectly, wrote Justice Harlan, and the state had failed to demonstrate a need for the lists which would outweigh the harm to associational rights which disclosure would produce.
Applying the concept in subsequent cases, the Court, in Bates v. City of Little Rock,607 again held that the disclosure of membership lists, because of the harm to “the right of association,” could be compelled only upon a showing of a subordinating interest; ruled in Shelton v. Tucker608 that, though a state had a broad interest to inquire into the fitness of its school teachers, that interest did not justify a regulation requiring all teachers to list all organizations to which they had belonged within the previous five years; again struck down an effort to compel membership lists from the NAACP;609 and overturned a state court order barring the NAACP from doing any business within the state because of alleged improprieties.610 Certain of the activities condemned in the latter case, the Court said, were protected by the First Amendment and, though other actions might not have been, the state could not infringe on the “right of association” by ousting the organization altogether.
