Newton, Mass.

TODAY is Constitution Day, the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution in 1787. Since 2005, by Congressional mandate, all educational institutions receiving federal funds — from preschools to universities, whether public or private — are required to provide relevant educational programming to observe the occasion. Boston College, where I teach, generally hosts a symposium; the local middle school offers skits about the First Amendment. The Constitution Day mandate was a brainchild of the late Senator Robert C. Byrd, who believed it was necessary to address the nation’s lack of appreciation for our founding document.

Ironically, Constitution Day is probably unconstitutional. One liberty the Constitution protects is the right of individuals and institutions not to applaud it. The laudable message that Congress wanted to send — our Constitution should be celebrated — is muddled by its method of mandatory commemoration. The mandate violates the academic freedom of the targeted institutions.

You might argue that observing Constitution Day is not actually mandatory because the schools have a choice: if they believe that observing Constitution Day is a violation of their autonomy, they can refuse federal money.

As a matter of constitutional law, however, this kind of choice can be unconstitutional. The issue turns on the “unconstitutional conditions” doctrine, an often puzzling area of Supreme Court jurisprudence. Sometimes the court says Congress can make funding conditional on a waiver of constitutional rights (as when it upheld a restriction on abortion counseling attached to family planning grants to hospitals). Sometimes the court says the opposite (as when it struck down conditions on legal aid that restricted recipients from bringing civil rights suits).