WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal judge barred the Bush administration from requiring nonprofit AIDS groups to sign a pledge opposing prostitution and sex trafficking in exchange for federal dollars.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said a law passed by Congress in 2003 violates the free-speech rights of groups such as DKT International Inc., which provides family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention programs in 11 countries.

Sullivan said the law goes too far because it insists that DKT “parrot” the U.S. government’s position on prostitution and bars the group from taking and putting in place a different viewpoint on the issue in the way it spends privately obtained funds.

“By mandating that DKT adopt an organization-wide policy against prostitution, the government exceeds its ability to limit the use of government funds,” Sullivan wrote.

In a lawsuit filed last year, DKT accused the U.S. Agency for International Development and its administrator of violating the free speech rights of AIDS nonprofit groups by requiring them to sign an anti-prostitution pledge to become eligible for U.S. government money.

In 2003, Congress created a $15 billion program for fighting AIDS worldwide. Under the law, groups that do not adopt a policy “explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking” cannot receive federal money.

The group’s representatives refused to sign the pledge because they are involved in a program to distribute condoms to prostitutes and other sex workers in Vietnam. Signing the pledge, they argued, would stigmatize and alienate many of the people they are trying to help.

The administration argued the law is narrowly tailored to prevent a “garbling” of U.S. policy goals, control use of federal dollars and ensure the U.S. government speaks with one voice internationally.

Sullivan disagreed, saying the Supreme Court repeatedly has ruled that the government cannot compel private groups “to speak in a content-specific, viewpoint specific manner” as a condition of receiving federal money.