LAW ON `DECENCY, RESPECT' IN NEA GRANTS RULED ILLEGAL.

Byline: Bob Egelko Associated Press 

A 1990 law requiring the National Endowment for the Arts to consider ``decency and respect'' for American values when granting money to artists, passed during a furor over the NEA's role, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal appeals court Tuesday.

In a 2-1 ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law was overly vague and discriminated on the basis of an artist's viewpoint.

``Under such a grant of authority, funding may be refused because of the artist's political or social message or because the art or artist is too controversial,'' said the opinion by Judge James Browning. ``Government funding of the arts, in the circumstances of this case, must be viewpoint-neutral.''

Dissenting Judge Andrew Kleinfeld said the government was entitled to favor particular viewpoints when awarding grants.

The law has not been in effect since 1992, when a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled it invalid in a suit by four noted performance artists whose NEA grants had been denied.

The Clinton administration inherited the dispute from its predecessor and decided to appeal the 1992 ruling. The Justice Department will decide, after consultation with the NEA, whether to appeal Tuesday's decision, said NEA general counsel Karen Christensen. Spokeswoman Cherie Simon said the NEA had no comment on the ruling.

The ruling means that ``artists are free to create works without having to guess about some unknown NEA bureaucrat's notion of what decency and respect mean,'' said David Cole, lawyer for the four artists. Cole is a law professor at Georgetown and an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The law was a product of conservative attacks on the NEA for funding such works as the homoerotic images of Robert Mapplethorpe.