Greer v. Spock

The Court had approved the regulations that gave the commander the right to exclude civilians from the base. In the majority's view, the commander had acted fairly. He had said that no political candidate could speak or hold a meeting on the base. In the Court's view, that was fair and therefore, constitutional.

Justice Powell added that the Fort Dix regulations did allow "conventional political campaign literature." It might seem that to allow Democrats and Republicans to give out literature, while forbidding such freedom to the People's Party and the Socialist Workers Party, would be a kind of discrimination against certain types of speech, but Powell said that because of the special nature of the military, the Constitution did allow a base commander to exercise his judgment in that way. Although a commander could not "prevent distribution of a publication simply because he does not like its contents" or because it was "critical--even unfairly critical--of government policies or officials," he could prevent distribution of literature that he perceived "to be a clear danger to the loyalty, discipline, or morale of troops on the base under his command."