A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the State University of New York at Albany cannot allow its student government to use referenda to decide how much money campus groups receive from student fees. Rather, the student government is required to distribute the mandatory fees in a way that is viewpoint-neutral.

The decision is in line with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in a 2000 case involving the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In that case, the court said that under the First Amendment, student-activity fees must be allocated without regard to an organization’s viewpoint.

SUNY-Albany’s method for allocating student fees came into question in 2004, when two students and a conservative group, the Collegian Action Leadership League, sued the university and its student government. The group had sought the same amount of money, about $106,000, that the New York Public Interest Research Group, which often takes left-of-center stands on a range of issues, receives from student fees each year. But the student government refused to put the issue on a campus ballot.

In 2005 a federal judge ruled that the referendum system violated the First Amendment and that the university must partly refund the two students’ fees. Tuesday’s decision upheld that ruling. —Elyse Ashburn