Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-13-05281/USCOURTS-caDC-13-05281-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 891
Nature of Suit: Agricultural Acts
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued May 19, 2014 Decided July 29, 2014 

No. 13-5281 

AMERICAN MEAT INSTITUTE, ET AL., 

APPELLANTS

v. 

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:13-cv-01033) 

Catherine E. Stetson argued the cause for appellants. 

With her on the briefs were Jonathan L. Abram, Judith E. 

Coleman, Mary Helen Wimberly, and Elizabeth B. Prelogar. 

Peter D. Keisler, Jonathan F. Cohn, Erika L. Myers, 

Rachel L. Brand, Steven P. Lehotsky, and Quentin Riegel were 

on the brief for amici curiae The National Association of 

Manufacturers, et al. in support of appellants. 

Jonathan Hacker and Anton Metlitsky were on the brief 

for amicus curiae Grocery Manufacturers Association in 

support of appellants. 

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Daniel Tenny, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for appellees. With him on the briefs were 

Stuart F. Delery, Assistant Attorney General, Ronald C. 

Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Mark B. Stern, Attorney. 

Terence P. Stewart was on the brief for intervenors 

United States Cattlemen’s Association, et al. in support of 

appellees. 

Zachary B. Corrigan, Julie A. Murray, Scott L. Nelson, 

and Allison M. Zieve were on the brief for amici curiae Food 

and Water Watch, Inc., et al. in support of appellees. 

Jonathan R. Lovvorn and Aaron D. Green were on the 

brief for amici curiae American Grassfed Association, et al. in 

support of appellees. 

George A. Kimbrell was on the brief for amici curiae

Center for Food Safety, et al. in support of appellees. 

Mark E. Greenwold was on the brief for amici curiae

Tobacco Control Legal Consortium, et al. in support of 

appellees. 

Stephan E. Becker was on the brief for amicus curiae The 

United Mexican States in support of neither party. 

Alan Kashdan was on the brief for amicus curiae

Government of Canada in support of neither party.

Before: GARLAND, Chief Judge, HENDERSON, ROGERS,

TATEL, BROWN, GRIFFITH, KAVANAUGH, SRINIVASAN, 

PILLARD, WILKINS, Circuit Judges, and WILLIAMS, Senior 

Circuit Judge. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS. 

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Opinion concurring in part filed by Circuit Judge 

ROGERS. 

Opinion concurring in the judgment filed by Circuit 

Judge KAVANAUGH. 

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge HENDERSON. 

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge BROWN, which 

Circuit Judge HENDERSON joins. 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge: Reviewing a regulation 

of the Secretary of Agriculture that mandates disclosure of 

country-of-origin information about meat products, a panel of 

this court rejected the plaintiffs’ statutory and First 

Amendment challenges. The panel found the plaintiffs 

unlikely to succeed on the merits and affirmed the district 

court’s denial of a preliminary injunction. On the First 

Amendment claim, the panel read Zauderer v. Office of 

Disciplinary Counsel, 471 U.S. 626, 651 (1985), to apply to 

disclosure mandates aimed at addressing problems other than 

deception (which the mandate at issue in Zauderer had been 

designed to remedy). Noting that prior opinions of the court 

might be read to bar such an application of Zauderer, the 

panel proposed that the case be reheard en banc. The full 

court shortly voted to do so. Order, American Meat Institute 

v. USDA, No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. Apr. 4, 2014) (vacating the 

judgment issued on Mar. 28, 2014, and ordering rehearing en 

banc). We now hold that Zauderer in fact does reach beyond 

problems of deception, sufficiently to encompass the 

disclosure mandates at issue here. 

* * * 

Congress has required country-of-origin labels on a 

variety of foods, including some meat products, 7 U.S.C. 

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§§ 1638, 1638a, and tasked the Secretary of Agriculture with 

implementation, id. § 1638c. In the original statute, Congress 

did not define “country of origin,” leaving that to the agency. 

Pub. L. No. 107-171, § 282, 116 Stat. 134, 533 (2002). After 

delaying the statute’s implementation, see, e.g., Pub. L. No. 

108-199, § 749, 118 Stat. 3, 37 (2004), Congress amended it 

in 2008 to define “country of origin,” Pub. L. No. 110-234, 

§ 11002, 122 Stat. 923, 1351-52 (2008). See also 153 Cong. 

Rec. 20,843 (2007) (statement of Rep. Peterson) (explaining 

the 2008 amendment as a compromise to allow the delayed 

country-of-origin mandate to go into effect). For meat cuts, at 

least, the amended statute defined country of origin based on 

where the animal has been born, raised, and slaughtered—the 

three major production steps. 7 U.S.C. § 1638a(a)(2). 

The Secretary, whom we refer to interchangeably with his 

delegate the Agricultural Marketing Service (“AMS”), first 

promulgated rules in 2009. Mandatory Country of Origin 

Labeling, 74 Fed. Reg. 2658 (Jan. 15, 2009) (“2009 rule”). 

The rules did not demand explicit identification of the 

production step(s) occurring in each listed country, but called 

more simply for labeling with a phrase starting “Product of,” 

followed by mention of one or more countries. 7 C.F.R. 

§ 65.400 (2010). The 2009 rule also made allowance for a 

production practice known as “commingling.” This made the 

labeling of meat cuts from animals of different origins 

processed together on a single production day relatively 

simple; the label could just name all the countries of origin for 

the commingled animals. Id. § 65.300(e)(2), (e)(4). 

After the 2009 rule’s adoption, Canada and Mexico filed 

a complaint with the Dispute Settlement Body of the World 

Trade Organization. In due course the WTO’s Appellate 

Body found the rule to be in violation of the WTO Agreement 

on Technical Barriers to Trade. See Appellate Body Report, 

United States—Certain Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) 

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Requirements, WT/DS384/AB/R (June 29, 2012). The 

gravamen of the WTO’s decision appears to have been an 

objection to the relative imprecision of the information 

required by the 2009 rule. See id. ¶ 343. In a different 

section of its opinion, the Appellate Body seemed to agree 

with the United States that country-of-origin labeling in 

general can serve a legitimate objective in informing 

consumers. Id. ¶ 453. A WTO arbitrator gave the United 

States a deadline to bring its requirements into compliance 

with the ruling. 

The Secretary responded with a rule requiring more 

precise information—revealing the location of each 

production step. Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling, 78 

Fed. Reg. 31,367 (May 24, 2013) (“2013 rule”). For example, 

meat derived from an animal born in Canada and raised and 

slaughtered in the United States, which formerly could have 

been labeled “Product of the United States and Canada,” 

would now have to be labeled “Born in Canada, Raised and 

Slaughtered in the United States.” In a matter of great 

concern to plaintiffs because of its cost implications, the 2013 

rule also eliminated the flexibility allowed in labeling 

commingled animals. Id. at 31,367/3. 

The plaintiffs, a group of trade associations representing 

livestock producers, feedlot operators, and meat packers, 

whom we’ll collectively call American Meat Institute 

(“AMI”), challenged the 2013 rule in district court as a 

violation of both the statute and the First Amendment. This 

led to the decisions summarized at the outset of this opinion. 

AMI argues that the 2013 rule violates its First 

Amendment right to freedom of speech by requiring it to 

disclose country-of-origin information to retailers, who will 

ultimately provide the information to consumers. See 7 

U.S.C. § 1638a(e). The question before us, framed in the 

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order granting en banc review, is whether the test set forth in 

Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 651, applies to government interests 

beyond consumer deception. Instead, AMI says, we should 

apply the general test for commercial speech restrictions 

formulated in Central Hudson, 447 U.S. 557, 566 (1980). 

Given the scope of the court’s order, we assume the 

correctness of the panel’s rejection of plaintiffs’ statutory 

claims. 

* * * 

The starting point common to both parties is that 

Zauderer applies to government mandates requiring 

disclosure of “purely factual and uncontroversial information” 

appropriate to prevent deception in the regulated party’s 

commercial speech. The key question for us is whether the 

principles articulated in Zauderer apply more broadly to 

factual and uncontroversial disclosures required to serve other 

government interests. AMI also argues that even if Zauderer

extends beyond correction of deception, the government has 

no interest in country-of-origin labeling substantial enough to 

sustain the challenged rules. 

Zauderer itself does not give a clear answer. Some of its 

language suggests possible confinement to correcting 

deception. Having already described the disclosure mandated 

there as limited to “purely factual and uncontroversial 

information about the terms under which [the transaction was 

proposed],” the Court said, “we hold that an advertiser’s rights 

are adequately protected as long as [such] disclosure 

requirements are reasonably related to the State’s interest in 

preventing deception of consumers.” 471 U.S. at 651. (It 

made no finding that the advertiser’s message was “more 

likely to deceive the public than to inform it,” which would 

constitutionally subject the message to an outright ban. See 

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Central Hudson, 447 U.S. at 563.) The Court’s own later 

application of Zauderer in Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz, P.A. 

v. United States, 559 U.S. 229 (2010), also focused on 

remedying misleading advertisements, which was the sole 

interest invoked by the government. Id. at 249. Given the 

subject of both cases, it was natural for the Court to express 

the rule in such terms. The language could have been simply 

descriptive of the circumstances to which the Court applied its 

new rule, or it could have aimed to preclude any application 

beyond those circumstances. Cf. Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 

(6 Wheat.) 264, 399 (1821) (Marshall, C.J., warning against 

extending general language of an opinion into different 

contexts), quoted in Arkansas Game and Fish Comm’n v. 

United States, 133 S. Ct. 511, 520 (2012). 

The language with which Zauderer justified its approach, 

however, sweeps far more broadly than the interest in 

remedying deception. After recounting the elements of 

Central Hudson, Zauderer rejected that test as unnecessary in 

light of the “material differences between disclosure 

requirements and outright prohibitions on speech.” Zauderer, 

471 U.S. at 650. Later in the opinion, the Court observed that 

“the First Amendment interests implicated by disclosure 

requirements are substantially weaker than those at stake 

when speech is actually suppressed.” Id. at 652 n.14. After 

noting that the disclosure took the form of “purely factual and 

uncontroversial information about the terms under which [the] 

services will be available,” the Court characterized the 

speaker’s interest as “minimal”: “Because the extension of 

First Amendment protection to commercial speech is justified 

principally by the value to consumers of the information such 

speech provides, appellant’s constitutionally protected interest 

in not providing any particular factual information in his 

advertising is minimal.” Id. at 651 (citation omitted). All 

told, Zauderer’s characterization of the speaker’s interest in 

opposing forced disclosure of such information as “minimal” 

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seems inherently applicable beyond the problem of deception, 

as other circuits have found. See, e.g., N.Y. State Rest. Ass’n 

v. N.Y. City Bd. of Health, 556 F.3d 114, 133 (2d Cir. 2009); 

Pharm. Care Mgmt. Ass’n v. Rowe, 429 F.3d 294, 310 (1st 

Cir. 2005) (Torruella, J.); id. at 316 (Boudin, C.J. & Dyk, J.); 

id. at 297-98 (per curiam) (explaining that the opinion of 

Chief Judge Boudin and Judge Dyk is controlling on the First 

Amendment issue); Nat’l Elec. Mfrs. Ass’n v. Sorrell, 272 

F.3d 104, 113-15 (2d Cir. 2001). 

To the extent that other cases in this circuit may be read 

as holding to the contrary and limiting Zauderer to cases in 

which the government points to an interest in correcting 

deception, we now overrule them.1 See, e.g., Nat’l Ass’n of 

Mfrs. v. SEC, 748 F.3d 359, 370-71 (D.C. Cir. 2014); Nat’l 

Ass’n of Mfrs. v. NLRB, 717 F.3d 947, 959 n.18 (D.C. Cir. 

2013); R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. FDA, 696 F.3d 1205, 

1214 (D.C. Cir. 2012). 

In applying Zauderer, we first must assess the adequacy 

of the interest motivating the country-of-origin labeling 

scheme. AMI argues that, even assuming Zauderer applies 

here, the government has utterly failed to show an adequate 

interest in making country-of-origin information available to 

consumers. AMI disparages the government’s interest as 

simply being that of satisfying consumers’ “idle curiosity.” 

 1

 Judge Henderson in her separate dissent criticizes the nowvacated panel opinion for stating the panel’s view that the language 

of R.J. Reynolds and National Association of Manufacturers v. 

NLRB limiting Zauderer to instances of deception-correction did 

not constitute holdings. Whatever the merits of that view, the panel 

recognized that other judges might reasonably take the contrary 

view and accordingly called for the court to consider the scope of 

Zauderer en banc, a call to which the court responded affirmatively. 

The present opinion is the consequence. 

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Counsel for AMI acknowledged during oral argument that her 

theory would as a logical matter doom the statute, “if the only 

justification that Congress has offered is the justification that 

it offered here . . . .” Oral Argument Tr. 18, American Meat 

Institute v. USDA, No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. May 19, 2014) (en 

banc). 

Beyond the interest in correcting misleading or confusing 

commercial speech, Zauderer gives little indication of what 

type of interest might suffice. In particular, the Supreme 

Court has not made clear whether Zauderer would permit 

government reliance on interests that do not qualify as 

substantial under Central Hudson’s standard, a standard that 

itself seems elusive. Cf. Kansas v. United States, 16 F.3d 436, 

443 (D.C. Cir. 1994) (“Indeed, the pedestrian nature of those 

interests affirmed as substantial calls into question whether 

any governmental interest—except those already found trivial 

by the Court—could fail to be substantial.”); Board of 

Trustees v. Fox, 492 U.S. 469, 475 (1989) (finding a ban 

applied to “Tupperware parties” in a college dormitory to be 

permissibly based on the state’s substantial interests in 

“promoting an educational rather than commercial atmosphere 

on SUNY’s campuses, promoting safety and security, 

preventing commercial exploitation of students, and 

preserving residential tranquility”). But here we think several 

aspects of the government’s interest in country-of-origin 

labeling for food combine to make the interest substantial: the 

context and long history of country-of-origin disclosures to 

enable consumers to choose American-made products; the 

demonstrated consumer interest in extending country-oforigin labeling to food products; and the individual health 

concerns and market impacts that can arise in the event of a 

food-borne illness outbreak. Because the interest motivating 

the 2013 rule is a substantial one, we need not decide whether 

a lesser interest could suffice under Zauderer. 

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Country-of-origin information has an historical pedigree 

that lifts it well above “idle curiosity.” History can be telling. 

In Burson v. Freeman, 504 U.S. 191, 211 (1992) (plurality 

opinion), for example, the Court, applying strict scrutiny to 

rules banning electioneering within a 100-foot zone around 

polling places, found an adequate justification in a “long 

history, a substantial consensus, and simple common sense.” 

See also Fla. Bar v. Went For It, Inc., 515 U.S. 618, 628 

(1995) (citing Burson for the same proposition). And 

country-of-origin label mandates indeed have a “long 

history.” Congress has been imposing similar mandates since 

1890, giving such rules a run just short of 125 years. See 

Tariff Act of 1890, ch. 1244, § 6, 26 Stat. 567, 613; United 

States v. Ury, 106 F.2d 28, 29 (2d Cir. 1939); see also Tariff 

Act of 1930, ch. 497, § 304, 46 Stat. 590, 687 (current version 

at 19 U.S.C. § 1304); Wool Products Labeling Act of 1939, as 

amended by Drug Price Competition and Patent Term 

Restoration Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-417, §§ 304-05, 98 

Stat. 1585, 1604 (current version at 15 U.S.C. 

§ 68b(a)(2)(D)); Fur Products Labeling Act, ch. 298, § 4, 65 

Stat. 175, 177-78 (1951) (current version at 15 U.S.C. 

§ 69b(2)(F)); Textile Fiber Products Identification Act, Pub. 

L. No. 85-897, § 4, 72 Stat. 1717, 1719 (1958) (current 

version at 15 U.S.C § 70b(b)(4)-(5)); American Automobile 

Labeling Act, Pub. L. No. 102-388, § 210, 106 Stat. 1556 

(1992) (current version at 49 U.S.C. § 32304). 

The history relied on in Burson was (as here) purely of 

legislative action, not First Amendment rulings by the 

judiciary. But just as in Burson, where “[t]he majority of [the] 

laws were adopted originally in the 1890s,” 504 U.S. at 208, 

the “time-tested consensus” that consumers want to know the 

geographical origin of potential purchases has material weight 

in and of itself, id. at 206. The Congress that extended 

country-of-origin mandates to food did so against a historical 

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backdrop that has made the value of this particular product 

information to consumers a matter of common sense. 

Supporting members of Congress identified the statute’s 

purpose as enabling customers to make informed choices 

based on characteristics of the products they wished to 

purchase, including United States supervision of the entire 

production process for health and hygiene. 148 Cong. Rec.

5491-92 (2002) (statement of Rep. Hooley, co-sponsor of 

country-of-origin amendment to 2002 Farm Bill) (mentioning 

“buy American” and safety interests motivating consumers’ 

desire for country-of-origin information); id. at 5493 

(statement of Rep. Wu) (same); see also 153 Cong. Rec. 

20,847 (2007) (statement of Rep. Bono) (calling country-oforigin labeling “a matter of public safety”). Some expressed a 

belief that with information about meat’s national origin, 

many would choose American meat on the basis of a belief 

that it would in truth be better. See, e.g., 148 Cong. Rec. 5492 

(2002) (statement of Rep. Hooley); id. (statement of Rep. 

Thune); id. (statement of Rep. Wu). Even though the 

production steps abroad for food imported into the United 

States are to a degree subject to U.S. government monitoring, 

see Brief for United Mexican States as Amicus Curiae at 4-6, 

it seems reasonable for Congress to anticipate that many 

consumers may prefer food that had been continuously under 

a particular government’s direct scrutiny. 

Some legislators also expressed the belief that people 

would have a special concern about the geographical origins 

of what they eat. This is manifest in anecdotes appearing in 

the legislative record, such as the collapse of the cantaloupe 

market when some imported cantaloupes proved to be 

contaminated and consumers were unable to determine 

whether the melons on the shelves had come from that 

country. See 148 Cong. Rec. 5492 (2002) (statement of Rep. 

Thurman). Of course the anecdote more broadly suggests the 

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utility of these disclosures in the event of any disease outbreak 

known to have a specific country of origin, foreign or 

domestic. 

The record is further bolstered by surveys AMS 

reviewed, such as one indicating that 71-73 percent of 

consumers would be willing to pay for country-of-origin 

information about their food. Mandatory Country of Origin 

Labeling, 68 Fed. Reg. 61,944, 61,955/2 (proposed Oct. 30, 

2003) (to be codified at 7 C.F.R. pt. 60) (“2003 proposed 

rule”); see also 2013 rule, 78 Fed. Reg. at 31,375/3 (noting 

that commenters had referred to a study showing consumer 

willingness to pay). The AMS quite properly noted the 

vulnerabilities in such data. Most obvious is the point that 

consumers tend to overstate their willingness to pay; after all, 

the data sound possibly useful, and giving a “Yes” answer on 

the survey doesn’t cost a nickel. 2003 proposed rule, 68 Fed. 

Reg. at 61,955/3; see also 2013 rule, 78 Fed. Reg. at 31,377/3 

(reiterating that the agency found no available consumer 

surveys using sufficiently complex modeling techniques). But 

such studies, combined with the many favorable comments 

the agency received during all of its rulemakings, reinforce 

the historical basis for treating such information as valuable. 

2013 rule, 78 Fed. Reg. at 31,376/1-2. 

In light of the legislators’ arguments, read in the context 

of country-of-origin labeling’s long history, we need not 

consider to what extent a mandate reviewed under Zauderer

can rest on “other suppositions,” as opposed to “the precise 

interests put forward by the State.” See Edenfield v. Fane, 

507 U.S. 761, 768 (1993). The statute itself mandates 

country-of-origin labels, 2013 rule, 78 Fed. Reg. at 31,377/2, 

and AMI makes no claim that the agency’s exercises of its 

discretion are of constitutional moment (and we are reviewing 

only AMI’s constitutional claim, not the separate statutory 

interpretation issue it raised before the panel). As “[t]he 

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Chenery doctrine [SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 94 

(1943)] has no application to” agency actions required by 

statute, Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc. v. Public Utility 

Dist. No. 1, 554 U.S. 527, 544-45 (2008), the “precise 

interests” served by the 2013 rule are simply those advanced 

by Congress in adopting the statute. 

We pause to note the implications of a rule under which a 

statute’s constitutionality could be doomed by agency 

fumbling (whether deliberate or accidental) of perfectly 

adequate legislative interests properly stated by congressional 

proponents. Such a rule would allow the executive to torpedo 

otherwise valid legislation simply by failing to cite to the 

court the interests on which Congress relied. And it would 

allow the next administration to revive the legislation by 

citing those interests. We do not think the constitutionality of 

a statute should bobble up and down at an administration’s 

discretion. 

In any event, the agency has sufficiently invoked the 

interests served by the statute, both during the rulemaking, 

2013 rule, 78 Fed. Reg. at 31,377/2 (“This rule . . . is the 

result of statutory obligations to implement the [country-oforigin] provisions of the 2002 and 2008 Farm Bills.”); id. at 

31,370/1, and in litigation, Federal Appellees’ Br. 25, 26, 

American Meat Institute v. USDA, No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. 

2014), and has certainly not disclaimed those interests, see 

Oral Argument Tr. 51-52, American Meat Institute v. USDA, 

No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. May 19, 2014) (en banc). 

Finally, agency statements (from prior rulemakings) 

claiming that country-of-origin labeling serves no food safety 

interest are not inconsistent with any of the government’s 

litigation positions here. Simply because the agency believes 

it has other, superior means to protect food safety doesn’t 

delegitimize a congressional decision to empower consumers 

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to take possible country-specific differences in safety 

practices into account. Nor does such an agency belief 

undercut the economy-wide benefits of confining the market 

impact of a disease outbreak. 

Having determined that the interest served by the 

disclosure mandate is adequate, what remains is to assess the 

relationship between the government’s identified means and 

its chosen ends. Under Central Hudson, we would determine 

whether “the regulatory technique [is] in proportion to [the] 

interest,” an inquiry comprised of assessing whether the 

chosen means “directly advance[s] the state interest involved” 

and whether it is narrowly tailored to serve that end. Central 

Hudson, 447 U.S. at 564; Fox, 492 U.S. at 480. Zauderer’s 

method of evaluating fit differs in wording, though perhaps 

not significantly in substance, at least on these facts. 

When the Supreme Court has analyzed Central Hudson’s 

“directly advance” requirement, it has commonly required 

evidence of a measure’s effectiveness. See Edenfield, 507 

U.S. at 770-71. But as the Court recognized in Zauderer, such 

evidentiary parsing is hardly necessary when the government 

uses a disclosure mandate to achieve a goal of informing 

consumers about a particular product trait, assuming of course 

that the reason for informing consumers qualifies as an 

adequate interest. 471 U.S. at 650; see also Milavetz, 559 

U.S. at 249 (referring to Zauderer as providing for “less 

exacting scrutiny”). Zauderer, like the doctrine of res ipsa 

loquitur, identifies specific circumstances where a party 

carries part of its evidentiary burden in a way different from 

the customary one. See, e.g., Bell v. May Dep’t Stores Co., 

866 F.2d 452, 455-56 (D.C. Cir. 1989). There, a plaintiff 

proves negligence by meeting the specified criteria (such as 

proving the defendant’s exclusive control over the agency 

causing the injury); here, by acting only through a reasonably 

crafted disclosure mandate, the government meets its burden 

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of showing that the mandate advances its interest in making 

the “purely factual and uncontroversial information” 

accessible to the recipients. Of course to match Zauderer

logically, the disclosure mandated must relate to the good or 

service offered by the regulated party, a link that in Zauderer

itself was inherent in the facts, as the disclosure mandate 

necessarily related to such goods or services. See Zauderer, 

471 U.S. at 651 (acknowledging that the disclosure mandate 

involved “purely factual and uncontroversial information 

about the terms under which [the] services will be available”). 

For purposes of this case, we need not decide on the precise 

scope or character of that relationship. 

The self-evident tendency of a disclosure mandate to 

assure that recipients get the mandated information may in 

part explain why, where that is the goal, many such mandates 

have persisted for decades without anyone questioning their 

constitutionality. In this long-lived group have been not only 

country-of-origin labels but also many other routine disclosure 

mandates about product attributes, including, for instance, 

disclosures of fiber content, 16 C.F.R. pt. 303, care 

instructions for clothing items, 16 C.F.R. pt. 423, and listing 

of ingredients, 21 C.F.R. § 101.4. 

Notwithstanding the reference to “narrow tailoring,” the 

Court has made clear that the government’s burden on the 

final Central Hudson factor is to show a “reasonable fit,” see 

Fox, 492 U.S. at 480, or a “reasonable proportion,” see 

Edenfield, 507 U.S. at 767, between means and ends. To the 

extent that the government’s interest is in assuring that 

consumers receive particular information (as it plainly is when 

mandating disclosures that correct deception), the means-end 

fit is self-evidently satisfied when the government acts only 

through a reasonably crafted mandate to disclose “purely 

factual and uncontroversial information” about attributes of 

the product or service being offered. In other words, this 

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particular method of achieving a government interest will 

almost always demonstrate a reasonable means-ends 

relationship, absent a showing that the disclosure is “unduly 

burdensome” in a way that “chill[s] protected commercial 

speech,” id. at 651. 

Thus, to the extent that the pre-conditions to application 

of Zauderer warrant inferences that the mandate will “directly 

advance” the government’s interest and show a “reasonable 

fit” between means and ends, one could think of Zauderer

largely as “an application of Central Hudson, where several 

of Central Hudson’s elements have already been established.” 

AMI Supplemental Br. at 9. 

In this case, the criteria triggering the application of 

Zauderer are either unchallenged or substantially 

unchallenged. The decision requires the disclosures to be of 

“purely factual and uncontroversial information” about the 

good or service being offered. Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 651. 

AMI does not contest that country-of-origin labeling qualifies 

as factual, and the facts conveyed are directly informative of 

intrinsic characteristics of the product AMI is selling. 

As to whether it is “controversial,” AMI objected to the 

word “slaughter” in its reply brief. Though it seems a plain, 

blunt word for a plain, blunt action, we can understand a claim 

that “slaughter,” used on a product of any origin, might 

convey a certain innuendo. But we need not address such a 

claim because the 2013 rule allows retailers to use the term 

“harvested” instead, 78 Fed. Reg. at 31,368/2, and AMI has 

posed no objection to that. And AMI does not disagree with 

the truth of the facts required to be disclosed, so there is no 

claim that they are controversial in that sense. 

We also do not understand country-of-origin labeling to 

be controversial in the sense that it communicates a message 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 16 of 71
17

that is controversial for some reason other than dispute about 

simple factual accuracy. Cf. Nat’l Ass’n of Mfrs. v. SEC, 748 

F.3d at 371 (questioning but not deciding whether the 

information mandated was factual and uncontroversial). 

Leaving aside the possibility that some required factual 

disclosures could be so one-sided or incomplete that they 

would not qualify as “factual and uncontroversial,” cf. Nat’l 

Ass’n of Mfrs. v. NLRB, 717 F.3d at 958 (describing one 

party’s argument that disclosures were “one-sided . . . 

favoring unionization”), country-of-origin facts are not of that 

type. AMI does not suggest anything controversial about the 

message that its members are required to express. 

Nor does the mandate run afoul of the Court’s warning 

that Zauderer does not leave the state “free to require 

corporations to carry the messages of third parties, where the 

messages themselves are biased against or are expressly 

contrary to the corporation’s views.” Pacific Gas & Electric 

Co. v. Public Utilities Commission, 475 U.S. 1, 15-16 n.12 

(1986) (plurality opinion). 

Finally, though it may be obvious, we note that Zauderer

cannot justify a disclosure so burdensome that it essentially 

operates as a restriction on constitutionally protected speech, 

as in Ibanez v. Florida Department of Business and 

Professional Regulation, 512 U.S. 136, 146-47 (1994), where 

a required disclaimer was so detailed that it “effectively 

rule[d] out notation of the ‘specialist’ designation on a 

business card or letterhead, or in a yellow pages listing.” Nor 

can it sustain mandates that “chill[] protected commercial 

speech.” Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 651. AMI has made no claim 

of either of these consequences. 

Accordingly we answer affirmatively the general question 

of whether “government interests in addition to correcting 

deception,” American Meat Inst. v. USDA, 746 F.3d 1065, 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 17 of 71
18

1073 n.1 (D.C. Cir. 2014), can be invoked to sustain a 

disclosure mandate under Zauderer, and specifically find the 

interests invoked here to be sufficient. We reinstate the 

judgment and leave untouched the opinion of the panel with 

respect to the remaining issues on appeal. 

 So ordered. 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 18 of 71
ROGERS, Circuit Judge, concurring in part. Although Ijoin

much of the court’s opinion, I write separately to disassociate

myself from the suggested reformulation of the separate

standards for First Amendment protection of commercial speech

in Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, 471 U.S. 626

(1985), and Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public

Service Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 557 (1980). The en

banc court defined the issue before it as whether the commercial

disclosure standard of Zauderer applies only when the

government’s interest is in preventing deception. See Order

(Apr. 4, 2014). Because the court holds Zauderer is not so

limited, and that the governmental interest is substantial, see Op.

at 6–14, there is no occasion today to speak more broadly. 

Viewing Zauderer as simply an application of Central Hudson

to special circumstances, as AMI has suggested to the en banc

court, see AMI Supp. Br. 8–11, finds support in neither Supreme

Court precedent nor the precedent of this court or our sister

circuits. Although the en banc court stops short of endorsing

this reformulation, stating only that “one could think of

Zauderer largely as an application of Central Hudson,” Op. at

16 (citation and internal quotation mark omitted), blurring the

lines between the standards portends unnecessary confusion

absent further instruction from the Supreme Court. 

The reformulation of the standards (as well as the dissent’s

approach, see dissenting opinion of Judge Brown, joined by

Judge Henderson, at 15–17), appears to contravene the Supreme

Court’s rationale in Zauderer and the purposes served by First

Amendment protection of commercial speech. Under the

Central Hudson standard, in reviewing restrictions on lawful,

non-misleading commercial speech, the Supreme Court

instructed that a court must determine “whether the asserted

governmental interest is substantial[,] . . . whetherthe regulation

directly advances the governmental interest asserted, and

whether it is not more extensive than is necessary to serve that

interest.” 447 U.S. at 566. But in Zauderer, although the Court

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2

began its analysis discussing both speech restrictions and a

disclosure requirement by referring to the standard under

Central Hudson, see 471 U.S. at 638, when the Court analyzed

the challenged disclosure requirement it rejected the argument

that the government needed to show direct advancement of its

interest, as review under Central Hudson would have required,

see id. at 650; Central Hudson, 447 U.S. at 566. The Court

instructed in analyzing the disclosure requirement that it suffices

instead to determine whether the “disclosure requirements are

reasonably related to the State’s interest in preventing deception

of consumers.” Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 651. The Court explained

that “disclosure requirements trench much more narrowly on an

advertiser’s interests than do flat prohibitions on speech,” id.,

indicating thereby that the Court was not tracing a shortcut

through Central Hudson but defining a category in which the

interests at stake were less threatened. In applying Zauderer, the

Court in Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz, P.A. v. United States, 559

U.S. 229 (2010), concluded that mandated disclosure

requirements for professionals assisting consumers with

bankruptcy were subject to the “less exacting scrutiny described

in Zauderer,” id. at 249, and did not violate the First

Amendment, see id. at 249–50, again treating Zauderer as

establishing a separate level of inquiry. See also id. at 255

(Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment)

(describing Zauderer as “a still lower standard of scrutiny”). 

Fairly understood, the Supreme Court’s analysis of the

disclosure requirement in Zauderer does not reformulate the

Central Hudson standard but rather establishes a different

standard based on the “material differences between disclosure

requirements and outright prohibitions on speech.” 471 U.S. at

650. Similarly, in 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island, 517 U.S.

484 (1996), the Court explained that “[w]hen a State regulates

commercial messages to protect consumers from misleading,

deceptive, or aggressive sales practices, or requires the

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3

disclosure of beneficial consumer information, the purpose of its

regulation is consistent with the reasons for according

constitutional protection to commercial speech and therefore

justifies less than strict review.” Id. at 501 (plurality opinion). 

This is consistent with the Court’s longstanding focus, in the

commercial speech area, on the “consumer’s interest in the free

flow of commercial information,” Va. State Bd. of Pharm. v. Va.

Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 748, 763 (1976), and

its “indispensable” role in “the proper allocation of resources in

a free enterprise system,” id. at 765. As our sister circuits have

held in applying the Zauderer standard, the government’s

imposition of a commercial disclosure requirement involving

“accurate, factual, commercial information does not offend the

core First Amendment values of promoting efficient exchange

of information or protecting individual liberty interests.” Nat’l

Elec. Mfrs. Ass’n v. Sorrell, 272 F.3d 104, 114 (2d Cir. 2001).

Such disclosure furthers, rather than hinders, the First

Amendment goal of the discovery of truth and

contributes to the efficiency of the “marketplace of

ideas.” Protection of the robust and free flow of

accurate information is the principal First Amendment

justification for protecting commercial speech, and

requiring disclosure of truthful information promotes

that goal. In such a case, then, less exacting scrutiny is

required than where truthful, nonmisleading

commercial speech is restricted.

Id. (citations omitted); see also Pharm. Care Mgmt. Ass’n v.

Rowe, 429 F.3d 294, 316 (1st Cir. 2005) (controlling opinion of

Boudin, C.J., and Dyk, J.); Robert Post, The Constitutional

Status of Commercial Speech, 48 U.C.L.A. L. REV. 1, 26–28

(2000).

The en banc court’s holding that Zauderer applies to

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 21 of 71
4

government disclosure interests beyond preventing deception

acknowledges that the First Amendment values underlying

protection of commercial speech naturally lead to a distinction

between disclosures and restrictions, but it appears not to

acknowledge the full implications of the distinction: Zauderer’s

conceptual framework is what drives not only its application to

disclosures serving other governmental interests, but also its less

rigorous level of scrutiny. The dissent’s analysis fails to

acknowledge that Zauderer’s holding with regard to the

disclosure requirement rested primarily on this difference

between disclosures and restrictions, not on the risk of

deception. Yet this court and our sister circuits have understood

the Supreme Court to have established distinct standards for

analyzing First Amendment challenges to government-imposed

commercial restrictions and disclosures. In R.J. Reynolds

Tobacco Co. v. FDA, 696 F.3d 1205, 1212 (D.C. Cir. 2012), the

court distinguished Central Hudson review from Zauderer and

likened the latter to rational-basis review. In Spirit Airlines, Inc.

v. DOT, 687 F.3d 403 (D.C. Cir. 2012), the court stated that

“[d]isclosure requirements . . . are not the kind of limitations

that the Court refers to when invoking the Central Hudson

standard of review,” id. at 413, and applied Zauderer as a less

stringent standard, see id. at 411–13. Indeed, the understanding

that Central Hudson and Zauderer involve distinct standards is

evident from the en banc order in the instant case. See Order

(Apr. 4, 2014) (instructing the parties to address “[w]hether,

under the First Amendment, judicial review of mandatory

disclosure of ‘purely factual and uncontroversial’ commercial

information, compelled for reasons other than preventing

deception, can properly proceed under Zauderer. . . , or whether

such compelled disclosure is subject to review under Central

Hudson . . .”). The opinions of our sister circuits are to the same

effect, that restrictions and disclosures are factually distinct and,

due to their different impacts on First Amendment interests, are

governed by different standards. See, e.g., Disc. Tobacco City

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 22 of 71
5

& Lottery, Inc. v. United States, 674 F.3d 509, 554–55 (6th Cir.

2012) (controlling opinion of Stranch, J.); N.Y. State Rest. Ass’n

v. N.Y. City Bd. of Health, 556 F.3d 114, 132–33 (2d Cir. 2009);

Pharm. Care Mgmt. Ass’n, 429 F.3d at 316 (1st Cir.); Nat’l Elec.

Mfrs. Ass’n, 272 F.3d at 113–15 (2d Cir.). But see United States

v. Wenger, 427 F.3d 840, 849 (10th Cir. 2005). 

Even assuming that AMI’s proposed reformulation of the

Central Hudson and Zauderer standards has little impact on the

outcome of the First Amendment challenge here, blurring the

lines between the two standards may sow confusion where, for

example, the focus is not on the adequacy of the government

interest, as here, but instead on the evidentiary support for, or

the “fit” of, the disclosure requirement. Absent further

instruction from the Supreme Court or consideration of the

question when it is necessary to our decision, the court has no

occasion to veer from the Supreme Court’s articulation of the

standards in Central Hudson and Zauderer. 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 23 of 71
KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment: 

May the U.S. Government require an imported Chinese-made 

product to be labeled “Made in China”? For many readers, 

the question probably answers itself: Yes. This case requires 

us to explain why that is so, in particular why such a 

requirement passes muster under the First Amendment. The 

precise First Amendment issue before us concerns a federal 

law that requires country-of-origin labels for meat and other 

food products. Country-of-origin labels are of course familiar 

to American consumers. Made in America. Made in Mexico. 

Made in China. And so on. For many decades, Congress has 

mandated such country-of-origin labels for a variety of 

products. I agree with the majority opinion that the First 

Amendment does not bar those longstanding and 

commonplace country-of-origin labeling requirements. 

As a starting point, all agree that the First Amendment 

imposes stringent limits on the Government’s authority to 

either restrict or compel speech by private citizens and 

organizations. See Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989);

Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705 (1977); West Virginia State 

Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943). This 

case involves commercial speech. The First Amendment 

protects commercial speech, and regulations of commercial 

speech are analyzed under the Supreme Court’s Central 

Hudson framework. To justify laws regulating commercial 

speech, the Government must (i) identify a substantial 

governmental interest and (ii) demonstrate a sufficient fit 

between the law’s requirements and that substantial 

governmental interest. See Central Hudson Gas & Electric 

Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 

557, 566 (1980). 

I will address in turn how those two basic Central 

Hudson requirements apply to this case. 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 24 of 71
2 

First, under Central Hudson, the Government must 

identify a substantial governmental interest that is served by 

the law in question. Since its decision in Central Hudson, the 

Supreme Court has not stated that something less than a 

“substantial” governmental interest would justify either a 

restriction on commercial speech or a compelled commercial 

disclosure. And likewise, the majority opinion today does not 

say that a governmental interest that is less than substantial 

would suffice to justify a compelled commercial disclosure. 

What interests qualify as sufficiently substantial to justify 

the infringement on the speaker’s First Amendment autonomy 

that results from a compelled commercial disclosure? Here, 

as elsewhere in First Amendment free-speech law, history and 

tradition are reliable guides. See Brown v. Entertainment 

Merchants Association, 131 S. Ct. 2729, 2734 (2011) (“a long 

(if heretofore unrecognized) tradition of proscription” may 

sometimes justify restrictions on speech); Republican Party of 

Minnesota v. White, 536 U.S. 765, 785 (2002) (“It is true that 

a universal and long-established tradition of prohibiting 

certain conduct creates a strong presumption that the 

prohibition is constitutional.”) (internal quotation marks 

omitted); Burson v. Freeman, 504 U.S. 191, 200-06 (1992) 

(plurality opinion) (history of state restrictions on 

electioneering supported conclusion that such a restriction 

was necessary to serve state’s compelling interests); see also 

McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334, 375-

78 (1995) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (“Where the meaning of a 

constitutional text (such as ‘the freedom of speech’) is 

unclear, the widespread and long-accepted practices of the 

American people are the best indication of what fundamental 

beliefs it was intended to enshrine.”). The Government has 

long required commercial disclosures to prevent consumer 

deception or to ensure consumer health or safety. Those 

interests explain and justify the compelled commercial 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 25 of 71
3 

disclosures that are common and familiar to American 

consumers, such as nutrition labels and health warnings. See, 

e.g., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. FDA, 696 F.3d 1205, 1211 

(D.C. Cir. 2012) (noting that there was no dispute about 

Congress’s authority to require health warnings on cigarette 

packages). 

But the Government cannot advance a traditional antideception, health, or safety interest in this case because a 

country-of-origin disclosure requirement obviously does not 

serve those interests. Rather, the Government broadly 

contends that it has a substantial interest in “providing 

consumers with information.” Tr. of Oral Arg. at 41. For 

Central Hudson purposes, however, it is plainly not enough 

for the Government to say simply that it has a substantial 

interest in giving consumers information. After all, that 

would be true of any and all disclosure requirements. That 

circular formulation would drain the Central Hudson test of 

any meaning in the context of compelled commercial 

disclosures. See R.J. Reynolds, 696 F.3d at 1221. Not 

surprisingly, governments (federal, state, and local) would 

love to have such a free pass to spread their preferred 

messages on the backs of others. But as the Second Circuit 

has stated, “Were consumer interest alone sufficient, there is 

no end to the information that states could require 

manufacturers to disclose about their production methods.” 

International Dairy Foods Association v. Amestoy, 92 F.3d 

67, 74 (2d Cir. 1996). Some consumers might want to know 

whether their U.S.-made product was made by U.S. citizens 

and not by illegal immigrants. Some consumers might want 

to know whether a doctor has ever performed an abortion. 

Some consumers might want to know the political affiliation 

of a business’s owners. These are not far-fetched 

hypotheticals, particularly at the state or local level. Do such 

consumer desires suffice to justify compelled commercial 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 26 of 71
4 

disclosures of such information on a product or in an 

advertisement? I think not, and history and tradition provide 

no support for that kind of free-wheeling government power 

to mandate compelled commercial disclosures. I agree with 

this Court’s rejection of such an undifferentiated 

governmental interest in R.J. Reynolds. And I agree with the 

Second Circuit’s statement in Amestoy that “consumer 

curiosity alone is not a strong enough state interest” to sustain 

a compelled commercial disclosure. Id. The majority 

opinion today properly does not embrace the Government’s 

broad argument. 

Although the Government’s broad argument is meritless, 

country-of-origin labeling is justified by the Government’s 

historically rooted interest in supporting American 

manufacturers, farmers, and ranchers as they compete with 

foreign manufacturers, farmers, and ranchers. Since the early 

days of the Republic, numerous U.S. laws have sought to 

further that interest, sometimes overtly and sometimes subtly. 

Although economists debate whether various kinds of 

protectionist legislation help U.S. consumers and the overall 

U.S. economy, there is no doubt that Congress has long 

sought to support and promote various U.S. industries against 

their foreign competition. How is that interest implicated by 

country-of-origin labeling? Country-of-origin labeling, it is 

widely understood, causes many American consumers (for a 

variety of reasons) to buy a higher percentage of Americanmade products, which in turn helps American manufacturers, 

farmers, and ranchers as compared to foreign manufacturers, 

farmers, and ranchers. That is why Congress has long 

mandated country-of-origin disclosures for certain products. 

See, e.g., United States v. Ury, 106 F.2d 28, 29 (2d Cir. 1939) 

(purpose of early country-of-origin labeling requirements 

“was to apprise the public of the foreign origin and thus to 

confer an advantage on domestic producers of competing 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 27 of 71
5 

goods”). That historical pedigree is critical for First 

Amendment purposes and demonstrates that the 

Government’s interest here is substantial. The majority 

opinion properly relies on the history of country-of-origin 

labeling laws as a basis for finding that the Government has a 

substantial interest in this case. 

That said, one wrinkle in this case is whether the 

Government has actually asserted an interest in supporting 

American farmers and ranchers in order to justify this 

country-of-origin labeling requirement for meat and other 

food products. Whether the Government has asserted such an 

interest matters because Central Hudson requires that the 

Government articulate the interests it seeks to advance. See 

Edenfield v. Fane, 507 U.S. 761, 768 (1993). And the 

Executive Branch has refrained during this litigation from 

expressly articulating its clear interest in supporting American 

farmers and ranchers in order to justify this law, apparently 

because of the international repercussions that might ensue. 

But the interest here is obvious, even if unarticulated by the 

Executive Branch for reasons of international comity. And 

more to the point for Central Hudson purposes, Members of 

Congress did articulate the interest in supporting American 

farmers and ranchers when Congress enacted this country-oforigin labeling law. See, e.g., 148 Cong. Rec. 5492-93, 6884-

85 (2002); see also id. at 1181. And Congress’s articulation 

of the interest suffices under Central Hudson. Cf. Turner 

Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 662 (1994) 

(looking to statutory findings and legislative history to discern 

the governmental interests served); Metromedia, Inc. v. City 

of San Diego, 453 U.S. 490, 493 (1981) (plurality opinion) 

(looking to text of city’s ordinance to discern the 

governmental interests served). 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 28 of 71
6 

In short, the Government has a substantial interest in this 

case in supporting American farmers and ranchers against 

their foreign competitors. 

The second question under Central Hudson concerns the 

fit between the disclosure requirement and the Government’s 

interest – as plaintiff AMI succinctly puts it, whether the 

disclosure requirement is “tailored in a reasonable manner.” 

AMI Supplemental Br. at 16 (quoting Edenfield, 507 U.S. at 

767); see also National Association of Manufacturers v. SEC, 

748 F.3d 359, 372 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (“must be a reasonable fit 

between means and ends” under Central Hudson) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). 

As I read it, the Supreme Court’s decision in Zauderer 

applied the Central Hudson “tailored in a reasonable manner” 

requirement to compelled commercial disclosures. At the 

outset of its opinion, the Zauderer Court described the general 

Central Hudson framework in detail. And then the Court 

stated: “we must apply the teachings of these cases,” 

including Central Hudson, to the three separate state 

regulations of attorney advertising at issue, including 

“disclosure requirements relating to the terms of contingent 

fees.” Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme 

Court of Ohio, 471 U.S. 626, 638 (1985). In applying the 

teachings of Central Hudson to the state disclosure 

requirement, the Zauderer Court required that such 

mandatory disclosures be “purely factual,” “uncontroversial,” 

not “unduly burdensome,” and “reasonably related to” the 

Government’s interest. Id. at 651. So Zauderer is best read 

simply as an application of Central Hudson, not a different 

test altogether. In other words, Zauderer tells us what 

Central Hudson’s “tailored in a reasonable manner” standard 

means in the context of compelled commercial disclosures: 

The disclosure must be purely factual, uncontroversial, not 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 29 of 71
7 

unduly burdensome, and reasonably related to the 

Government’s interest.1

It is important to underscore that those Zauderer fit 

requirements are far more stringent than mere rational basis 

review. When the Supreme Court applies rational basis 

review, it does not attach a host of requirements of the kind 

prescribed by Zauderer. Rational basis review is extremely 

deferential and in this context would undoubtedly tolerate 

government mandates of moral or policy-laden messages, of 

controversial messages, of burdensome labels, of disclosures 

that are only indirectly related to the Government’s interests. 

Zauderer tolerates none of that. Zauderer tightly limits 

mandatory disclosures to a very narrow class that meets the 

various Zauderer requirements. So to the extent that some 

courts, advocates, and commentators have portrayed a choice 

between the “tough Central Hudson standard” and the 

“lenient Zauderer standard,” I see that as a false choice. As I 

read it, Zauderer applied and elaborated on Central Hudson’s 

“tailored in a reasonable manner” requirement and established 

a demanding set of requirements that the Government must 

 1

 To state what is probably obvious, the compelled disclosure 

must be a disclosure about the product or service in question to be 

justified under Central Hudson and Zauderer. The First 

Amendment does not tolerate a government effort to compel 

disclosures unrelated to the product or service – for example, a 

compelled disclosure on all food packages (not just cigarette 

packages) that cigarette smoking causes cancer. The majority 

opinion, as I read it, agrees with that principle. See Maj. Op. at 15 

(“Of course to match Zauderer logically, the disclosure mandated 

must relate to the good or service offered by the regulated 

party . . . .”); see also Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of 

Supreme Court of Ohio, 471 U.S. 626, 651 (1985) (state required 

an attorney’s advertising to disclose “information about the terms 

under which his services will be available”). 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 30 of 71
8 

meet to justify a compelled commercial disclosure. The 

majority opinion properly does not equate Zauderer to mere 

rational basis review and properly insists that the mandatory 

disclosure here must meet all of the various Zauderer

requirements. And the majority opinion and I agree on the 

following: To justify a compelled commercial disclosure, 

assuming the Government articulates a substantial 

governmental interest, the Government must show that the 

disclosure is purely factual, uncontroversial, not unduly 

burdensome, and reasonably related to the Government’s 

interest.2

In this case, as the majority opinion properly concludes, 

those stringent Zauderer fit requirements are met. The 

country-of-origin labeling requirement at issue here is purely 

factual, is not unduly burdensome, and as explained above is 

 2

 Although I agree with the results and most of the reasoning 

of R.J. Reynolds and National Association of Manufacturers, I 

disagree with those cases’ description of Zauderer as mere rational 

basis review. See National Association of Manufacturers v. SEC, 

748 F.3d 359, 370-71 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (characterizing Zauderer as 

“rational basis review”); R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. FDA, 696 

F.3d 1205, 1212 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (Zauderer review is “akin to 

rational-basis review”). That description of Zauderer in turn led 

those cases to apply the Central Hudson test rather than the 

Zauderer test to the compelled commercial disclosures at issue in 

those cases. To reiterate, however, I see the choice between 

Zauderer and Central Hudson as a false choice because it is based 

on a mistaken premise, in my view. Zauderer applied Central 

Hudson’s fit prongs to this compelled commercial speech context 

and set forth a variety of stringent requirements far more 

demanding than mere rational basis review. The majority opinion 

today properly recognizes that Zauderer did not embrace mere 

rational basis review, and the majority opinion thus disavows that 

aspect of R.J. Reynolds and National Association of Manufacturers

without disturbing the results of those cases. 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 31 of 71
9 

reasonably related to the Government’s longstanding interest 

in supporting American farmers and ranchers. To be sure, 

determining whether a disclosure is “uncontroversial” may be 

difficult in some compelled commercial speech cases, in part 

because it is unclear how we should assess and what we 

should examine to determine whether a mandatory disclosure 

is controversial. But regardless of how the “uncontroversial” 

requirement might play out in other cases, the issue poses 

little difficulty here. Unlike the mandated disclosures at issue 

in R.J. Reynolds or National Association of Manufacturers, 

for example, a country-of-origin label cannot be considered 

“controversial” given the factually straightforward, evenhanded, and readily understood nature of the information, as 

well as the historical pedigree of this specific kind of 

disclosure requirement. Cf. National Association of 

Manufacturers, 748 F.3d at 371 (disclosure requirement that 

in essence compelled “an issuer to confess blood on its 

hands”); R.J. Reynolds, 696 F.3d at 1216-17 (disclosure 

requirements that compelled the display of “inflammatory 

images” and constituted “unabashed attempts to evoke 

emotion” and “browbeat customers”). 

* * * 

For those reasons, I would uphold this country-of-origin 

labeling requirement. As I read it, the majority opinion is 

consistent with my analysis. But I thought it important to 

spell out each step of my analysis in greater detail. Bottom 

line: I agree with the majority opinion that we should affirm 

the judgment of the District Court. 

USCA Case #13-5281 Document #1504951 Filed: 07/29/2014 Page 32 of 71
KAREN LECRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge, dissenting: 

 I agree with Judge Brown that the en banc majority is 

wrong on the merits and join fully her well-reasoned and 

compelling dissent. But, for the life of me, I do not 

understand how we got to the en banc stage in this case. As 

Judge Brown notes, the original panel “was wrong to 

contradict R.J. Reynolds”—and not solely because the panel 

was wrong on the merits. See Dissent at 11 (citing R.J. 

Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. FDA, 696 F.3d 1205, 1213 (D.C. 

Cir. 2012)). The panel was also wrong for the simple reason 

that its merits decision—whether or not correct—did indeed 

“contradict” our decision in R.J. Reynolds and therefore 

should not have issued. 

 One of our court’s most fundamental governing 

principles is the “law of the circuit doctrine” which decrees 

that the decision of a three-judge panel of the court “is ‘the 

decision of the court.’ ” LaShawn v. Barry, 87 F.3d 1389, 

1395 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (en banc) (quoting Revision Notes to 

28 U.S.C. § 46). “One three-judge panel, therefore, does not 

have the authority to overrule another three-judge panel of the 

court.” Id. Yet, inexplicably, this is what happened here. 

In R.J. Reynolds, we vacated the Food and Drug 

Administration’s final rule establishing mandatory graphics 

warnings on cigarette packages. In so doing, we rejected two 

‘‘narrow and well-understood exceptions to the general rule 

that content based speech regulations—including compelled 

speech—are subject to strict scrutiny.” R.J. Reynolds, 696 

F.3d at 1212 (quotation marks omitted). The first of the 

exceptions—which is at issue here—covers “ ‘purely factual 

and uncontroversial’ disclosures [that] are ‘reasonably related 

to the State’s interest in preventing deception of consumers,’ 

provided the requirements are not ‘unjustified or unduly 

burdensome.’ ” Id. (quoting Zauderer v. Office of 

Disciplinary Counsel, 471 U.S. 626, 651 (1985)). In R.J. 

Reynolds, the majority found the Zauderer standard 

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2 

inapplicable to the graphics warning requirement because “by 

its own terms, Zauderer’s holding is limited to cases in which 

disclosure requirements are ‘reasonably related to the State’s 

interest in preventing deception of consumers.’ ” Id. at 1213

(quoting Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 651); see also id. at 1214 

(“[T]he government could not seek review under the lenient 

Zauderer standard absent a showing that the advertisement at 

issue would likely mislead consumers.”); id. (“Zauderer, 

Ibanez, and Milavetz thus establish that a disclosure 

requirement is only appropriate if the government shows that, 

absent a warning, there is a . . . danger that an advertisement 

will mislead consumers.”); id. at 1214-15 (“[I]n the absence 

of any congressional findings on the misleading nature of 

cigarette packaging itself, there is no justification under 

Zauderer for the graphic warnings.”); see also Nat’l Ass’n of 

Mfrs. v. NLRB, 717 F.3d 947, 959 n.18 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (“In a 

footnote to its brief, the Board states that its rule satisfies 

Zauderer . . ., but it does not explain why that decision has 

even the slightest bearing on this case. Under Zauderer, the 

government may, consistently with the First Amendment, 

require a party to a commercial transaction to make 

disclosures in order to prevent that party from deceiving its 

customers.” (citing R.J. Reynolds, 696 F.3d at 1215)). 

Given its repeated and emphatic reliance on the limited 

applicability of the Zauderer standard—to language involving 

deception—the R.J.Reynolds majority plainly considered the 

inapplicability of Zauderer as “integral” and “necessary” to 

its decision,” that is to say, a “holding.” See Aamer v. 

Obama, 742 F.3d 1023, 1033 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (determination 

that was “integral to our ultimate disposition of [a] case . . . 

constitutes binding precedent”); Cross v. Harris, 418 F.2d 

1095, 1105 n.64 (D.C. Cir. 1969) (“The distinction between 

holding and dictum . . . turns on whether the court, in stating 

its opinion on the point, believed it necessary to decide the 

question or was simply using it by way of illustration of the 

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3 

case at hand.”). Nor was the importance of the majority’s 

reading of Zauderer lost on the dissenting judge. See R.J. 

Reynolds, 696 F.3d at 1223 (Rogers, J., dissenting) (“Even 

treating Zauderer’s ‘less exacting scrutiny’ as limited to 

disclosure requirements serving a governmental interest in 

preventing consumer deception, the voluminous findings of 

our own courts . . . are more than adequate to substantiate that 

interest”) (emphasis added); id. at 1227 n.6 (noting “[a]s other 

circuits have recognized, in Zauderer the Supreme Court 

appears simply to have held that a government interest in 

protecting consumers from possible deception is sufficient to 

support a disclosure requirement—not that this particular 

interest is necessary to support such a requirement” but also 

concluding “[i]n view of the likelihood of consumer 

confusion or deception shown here, there is no need to 

determine whether the scope of Zauderer encompasses other 

government interests”) (emphasis in original). 

Nonetheless, the original panel here decided that 

“Zauderer is best read as applying not only to mandates 

aimed at curing deception but also to ones for other purposes, 

and that neither Reynolds nor [National Association of 

Manufacturers v. NLRB, 717 F.3d 947 (D.C. Cir. 2013)] 

represents a holding to the contrary.” Am. Meat Inst. v. U.S. 

Dep’t of Agric. (AMI I), 746 F.3d 1065, 1073 (D.C. Cir. 

2014), vacated, 2014 WL 2619836 (D.C. Cir. Apr. 4, 2014) 

(granting rehearing en banc). I find this conclusion untenable 

given the centrality of the R.J. Reynolds majority’s limited 

reading of Zauderer. Because that reading constituted part of 

R.J. Reynolds’s holding, the “power” to overrule it could 

properly “be exercised only by the full court, either through 

an in [sic] banc decision or pursuant to the more informal 

practice adopted in Irons v. Diamond, 670 F.2d 265, 268 n.11 

(D.C. Cir. 1981),” LaShawn, 87 F.3d at 1395 (citation 

omitted). The panel nonetheless issued its own decision 

overruling R.J. Reynolds’s Zauderer holding instead of either 

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4 

seeking full en banc hearing or inserting a proper Irons

footnote announcing, if obtained, the en banc court’s 

unanimous endorsement of the opinion.*

 *

That the panel forewent the Irons footnote procedure is not 

surprising as none of the justifications therefor fits. Our written 

policy, based on our accumulated case law, sets out four specific—

albeit non-exclusive—bases for an Irons footnote: 

 (1) resolving an apparent conflict in the prior 

decisions of panels of the court; 

 (2) rejecting a prior statement of law which, although 

arguably dictum, warrants express rejection to avoid 

future confusion; 

 (3) overruling an old or obsolete decision which, 

although still technically valid as precedent, has plainly 

been rendered obsolete by subsequent legislation or other 

developments; and 

 (4) overruling a more recent precedent which, due to 

an intervening Supreme Court decision, or the combined 

weight of authority from other circuits, a panel is 

convinced is clearly an incorrect statement of current law. 

Policy Statement on En Banc Endorsement of Panel Decisions at 1 

(Jan. 17, 1996); see also In re Sealed Case, 181 F.3d 128, 145-46 

(D.C. Cir. 1999) (Henderson, J., concurring). The only justification 

that might conceivably apply here is the second—but given the R.J. 

Reynolds majority’s repeated emphasis on Zauderer’s deception 

limitation, I do not see how it qualifies as even “arguably dictum.” 

While a panel retains discretion to “determine that a statement in a 

prior decision was dictum, not requiring en banc action to reject,” 

id. at 2-3, the panel here acknowledged it is “reasonable” to read 

R.J. Reynolds’s treatment of Zauderer as a holding—see AMI I, 746 

F.3d at 1073 n.1 (“We recognize that reasonable judges may read 

Reynolds as holding that Zauderer can apply only where the 

government’s interest is in correcting deception.”) (emphasis 

added). Accordingly, the appropriate step under our procedure was 

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5 

 In sum, I do not understand how the panel opinion in this 

case came to be. Its issuance is inconsistent with our law of 

the circuit doctrine and runs counter to the principle of stare 

decisis, which “ ‘demands that we abide by a recent decision 

of one panel of this court unless the panel has withdrawn the 

opinion or the court en banc has overruled it.’ ” In re Sealed 

Case, 181 F.3d 128, 145 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (Henderson, J., 

concurring (quoting Brewster v. Commissioner, 607 F.2d 

1369, 1373 (D.C. Cir. 1979)) (quotation marks omitted). I 

need hardly add my hope that this case is an outlier; if not, we 

risk adopting the habit of slapping the “dictum” label on any 

holding that any two of us find inconvenient and thereby 

replacing law of the circuit with law of the panel. 

 

to include an Irons footnote rather than overruling R.J. Reynolds

outright. 

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BROWN, Circuit Judge, dissenting: Throughout oral 

argument, AMI’s counsel repeatedly summarized the 

analytical options before the en banc court:

[T]he bottom line is if Central Hudson applies, [AMI] 

should prevail; if Zauderer applies only to deception, 

[AMI] should prevail; if Zauderer applies only to 

consumer protection, health and safety, and deception, 

[AMI] should prevail. The only way [AMI does not] 

prevail is if this Court concludes that Zauderer applies to 

any interest, no matter how articulated, no matter how 

speculative. 

Tr. of Oral Arg. at 39, Am. Meat. Inst. v. USDA, No. 13-5281 

(D.C. Cir. May 19, 2014) (en banc). No doubt counsel 

thought stating such an outrageous proposition would be 

sufficient to refute it. But, astonishing as it may be to First 

Amendment scholars, the court today doubles down on that 

extraordinary result. The court holds “Zauderer . . . reach[es] 

beyond problems of deception, sufficiently to encompass” 

factual and noncontroversial disclosure mandates aimed at 

providing more information to some consumers. Maj. Op. at 

3. As a result, the fundamental First Amendment right not to 

be coerced or compelled to say what one would not say 

voluntarily is now demoted to a mere tautology: “[B]y acting 

. . . through a reasonably crafted disclosure mandate, the 

government meets its burden of showing that the mandate 

advances its interest in making the ‘purely factual and 

uncontroversial information’ accessible to the recipients.” 

Maj. Op. at 15. In other words, a business owner no longer 

has a constitutionally protected right to refrain from speaking, 

as long as the government wants to use the company’s 

product to convey “purely factual and uncontroversial” 

information. 

 In so finding, the court today ignores the plain words of 

Zauderer’s text and disregards its historical context; both the 

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2

text and history of the case emphasize the government’s 

unique interest in preventing commercial deception. By 

expanding Zauderer beyond deception, the court has now 

created a standard that is actually even more relaxed than 

rational basis review; essentially, the new standard for 

compelled commercial disclosures—or perhaps even all 

commercial speech restrictions—thus becomes rational basis 

review minus any legitimate justification. Instead of 

requiring the government to justify its regulations, the court 

searches sua sponte through the underlying statute’s 

legislative record, desperately seeking justifications while 

ignoring the agency’s actual rulemaking record. Instead of 

relying on the precise interests articulated by the government 

in this case, the court tries to reclaim and rehabilitate 

rationales for the rule the agency has consistently discredited 

and denied: health and safety and domestic protectionism. 

Even rational basis review is less dismissive of constitutional 

guarantees.

The court’s ardent reliance on the legislative record to 

justify the rule, in lieu of the regulatory text itself or the 

rulemaking record presented by the government, is baffling. 

Though this case has a constitutional dimension, it challenges 

an agency rulemaking. Ordinarily, that means our review is 

limited to the record as the agency presented it, Camp v. Pitts,

411 U.S. 138, 142 (1973), and confined to considering the 

agency’s rationale as the agency articulated it, SEC v. 

Chenery, 332 U.S. 194, 196 (1947). But, tossing aside longstanding administrative law principles is only the beginning of 

the lengths to which the court goes to bust the mainspring of 

commercial speech jurisprudence. What began as robust 

protection from government coercion has now been reduced 

to an eerie echo of a supermarket tabloid’s vacuous motto: 

the government may compel citizens to provide, against their 

will, whatever information “[i]nquiring minds want to know!” 

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3

I dissent.

I

Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, 471 U.S. 626 

(1985), did not appear ex nihilo, nor can its analysis be read in

vacuo. Giving attention to all parts of the whole, and read in 

its historical context, Zauderer’s meaning cannot rationally be 

disputed. Only by plucking phrases from the analysis shorn 

of all contextual clues and by pretending the case stands 

completely outside the historical evolution of the Supreme 

Court’s commercial speech doctrine can the court reach its 

disingenuous conclusions: (1) Zauderer “does not give a 

clear answer” to whether its principles apply more broadly to 

disclosures serving governmental interests beyond curing 

deception, Maj. Op. at 6; and (2) Zauderer “gives little 

indication of what type of interest might suffice,” Maj. Op. at 

9. If, as Jeremy Bentham once quipped, a fanciful argument 

may be dismissed as “nonsense upon stilts,” the court’s 

analysis in this case can best be described as delirium on a 

pogo stick. 

A

The court’s erratic and idiosyncratic parsing of 

Zauderer’s text manages to create an impression of 

impenetrable opacity where the ordinary reader would find 

commendable clarity. Asserting that the “language with 

which Zauderer justified its approach . . . sweeps far more 

broadly than the interest in remedying deception,” the court 

hinges its claims on just three scraps from Zauderer: a 

sentence about “material differences,” a sentence buried in a 

footnote, and the word “minimal.” See Maj. Op. at 7. Each 

plucked out of context. 

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4

As Chief Judge Garland explained to government counsel 

during oral argument, “If you’re going to rely on Zauderer,

you’ve got to take the whole thing.” Tr. of Oral Arg. at 51, 

Am. Meat. Inst., No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. May 19, 2014) (en 

banc). This is sound advice. Since the days of Chief Justice 

John Marshall, appellate courts have recognized the folly of 

lifting a general phrase or sentence out of an opinion and 

applying it to an entirely different context. See, e.g., Cohens

v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264, 399 (1821). The 

Supreme Court recently affirmed that wisdom in Arkansas

Game & Fish Commission v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 511 

(2012), where the Court recalled Marshall’s “sage observation 

that ‘general expressions, in every opinion, are to be taken in 

connection with the case in which those expressions are 

used,’” id. at 520 (quoting Cohens, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) at 

399). Zauderer is triggered by its context and is incoherent 

when unmoored from the deception rationale. 

In Zauderer, an attorney challenged Ohio’s restrictions 

on lawyer advertising after he was disciplined for certain 

allegedly misleading newspaper advertisements. Specifically, 

when one advertisement promised clients would owe no legal 

fees in cases without a recovery, the disciplinary office 

complained the ad failed to follow regulations requiring 

disclosure that clients still may be liable for costs in 

unsuccessful claims. See Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 630–34. 

First, the Supreme Court clarified both that the First 

Amendment protects commercial speech, id. at 637–38, and 

that it protects advertisers from compelled speech. Id. at 650–

51. However, the First Amendment does not shield deceptive, 

false, or fraudulent speech that proposes a commercial 

transaction. Id. at 638. But, where that deceptive advertising 

could be cured by more speech, the government may choose 

between requiring disclosure and directly prohibiting the 

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5

advertisement. Id. at 651. While there are “material 

differences” between disclosure requirements and outright 

prohibitions, compelled speech “may be as violative of the 

First Amendment as [prohibited] speech,” and the government 

faces a heavy burden to justify involuntary affirmation (being 

forced to carry the government’s message). Id. at 650. After 

reconfirming that the government may not attempt to 

“prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, 

religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens” to 

conform to the state’s assumptions, id. at 651, the Court then 

contrasted the imposition of orthodoxy—prohibited by the 

First Amendment—with Ohio’s regulation of deceptive 

commercial advertising. When the purpose of compelling 

factual information is to cure deception, the advertiser’s 

“constitutionally protected interest . . . is minimal.” Id. To 

avoid any possible confusion, the court succinctly 

summarized: “[W]e hold that an advertiser’s rights are 

adequately protected as long as disclosure requirements are 

reasonably related to the State’s interest in preventing 

deception of consumers.” Id. (emphasis added). 

Crucial to the Court’s analysis was not just the difference 

between disclosure and prohibition; it was also the difference 

between disclosure in advertising and that advertisement’s 

outright prohibition, given the state’s prerogative to prohibit 

misleading commercial speech. The Court was absolutely 

clear: “[B]ecause disclosure requirements trench much more 

narrowly on an advertiser’s interests than do flat prohibitions 

on speech, warnings or disclaimers might be appropriately 

required in order to dissipate the possibility of consumer 

confusion or deception.” Id. (emphasis added). In short, the 

state’s option to require a curative disclosure cannot be 

disconnected from its right to entirely prohibit deceptive, 

fraudulent, or misleading commercial speech. Requiring an 

advertiser to provide “somewhat more information than they 

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6

might otherwise be inclined to present,” id. at 650 (emphasis 

added), is thus constitutionally permissible when the 

government’s available alternative is to completely ban that 

deceptive speech. Nowhere does Zauderer claim a 

commercial speaker can be forced to speak factual and 

noncontroversial information in the first instance. Instead, the 

text emphasizes the interests of advertisers, i.e., those who 

have already spoken. See, e.g., id. at 651 (noting minimal 

constitutionally protected interest in “not providing any 

particular factual information in . . . advertising”) (emphasis 

added).1

 Thus, even when the advertiser makes affirmative 

claims and the basis for a curative disclosure is self-evident, 

the advertiser still retains minimal First Amendment 

protections. Conversely, when the government is not curing 

deception, constitutional protections remain robust and 

undiminished. That the compelled information must be 

factual and noncontroversial is part of the government’s 

burden. This characterization is not a trigger that transforms 

every seller’s packaging into the government’s billboard. 

Inexplicably, the court now upends the precise 

constitutional hierarchy outlined in Zauderer by ignoring the 

clear linkage between advertising, deception, and the state 

interest in curing that deception, which forms the core of the 

Supreme Court’s reasoning. 

1 Accord United States v. United Foods, Inc., 533 U.S. 405, 416 

(2001) (noting, in Zauderer, that the Court permitted 

disclosure mandates for “attorneys who advertised by their 

own choice” and made potentially misleading statements 

(emphasis added)).

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B

By parsing Zauderer in such a piecemeal fashion, this 

court robs the decision of its internal consistency and strips it 

of any historical context. The Framers resisted adding a Bill 

of Rights to the Constitution because they feared the 

elucidation of some rights would overshadow the telos

inherent in the Constitution as a whole. The Constitution of 

liberty they conceived was premised on the natural law and 

conceded the immanence of the first principle of that law—

that an adult human being, as a free moral agent, cannot be 

coerced without good reason. At the same time, they 

understood James Wilson’s observation that no one ever had a 

natural right to do wrong. This is precisely the balance the 

Supreme Court struck in its early opinions acknowledging 

protection for commercial speech. 

When the Supreme Court extended formal constitutional 

protection to commercial speech, it emphasized that false or 

misleading commercial speech remained unprotected. See 

Va. State Bd. of Pharmacy v. Va. Citizens Consumer Council, 

Inc., 425 U.S. 748, 772 & n.24 (1976). Granting 

constitutional protection to commercial speech did not 

preclude regulation of false or deceptive advertising; 

accordingly, the Court anticipated that the government might 

“require that a commercial message appear in such a form, or 

include such additional information, warnings, and 

disclaimers, as are necessary to prevent its being deceptive.”

Id. (emphasis added). Sanctioning disclosure was not an 

exception to the otherwise stringent protections of the First 

Amendment; rather, it was the Court’s acknowledgement that 

sellers of products had no right under our constitutional 

regime to wrongly deceive consumers. Thus, the Court made 

a sensible distinction between expression of opinion (which is 

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8

protected even if it is incorrect) and expression of commercial 

fact, for which the state can require accuracy. 

The court disregards the Supreme Court’s extraordinarily 

consistent jurisprudence in this area, from Virginia Board to 

Zauderer through the present day: the government may 

regulate commercial speech to avoid misleading or confusing 

consumers. While broad bans on nonmisleading commercial 

speech were immediately suspect, the Court repeatedly 

affirmed the narrow niche occupied by actual, inherently, and 

potentially deceptive speech subject to government 

regulation. See, e.g., Linmark Assocs., Inc. v. Willingboro 

Twp., 431 U.S. 85, 98 (1977) (remarking “laws requiring 

[false and misleading] signs to appear in such a form, or 

include such additional information as is necessary to prevent 

their being deceptive . . . would raise very different 

constitutional questions” than the unconstitutional ban on all 

“for sale” signs); Bates v. State Bar of Ariz., 433 U.S. 350, 

375 (1977) (“[T]he bar retains the power to correct omissions 

that have the effect of presenting an inaccurate picture . . . .”); 

Bates, 433 U.S. at 383–84 (noting certain claims “not 

susceptible of measurement or verification . . . may be so 

likely to be misleading as to warrant restriction”); Bates, 433 

U.S. at 383–84 (“We do not foreclose the possibility that 

some limited supplementation, by way of warning or 

disclaimer or the like, might be required of [an advertisement] 

so as to assure that the consumer is not misled.”); In re 

R.M.J., 455 U.S. 191, 200–01 (1982) (reiterating Bates’s

conclusion that warnings or disclaimers “might be 

appropriately required . . . in order to dissipate the possibility 

of consumer confusion or deception”); In re R.M.J., 455 U.S.

at 200 n.11 (noting the governmental entity “could require 

disclaimers or explanations to avoid false hopes”); In re 

R.M.J., 455 U.S. at 202 (“[R]egulation . . . [is] permissible 

where the particular advertising is inherently likely to deceive 

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9

or where the record indicates that a particular form or method 

of advertising has in fact been deceptive.”); Bolger v. Youngs 

Drug Prods. Corp., 463 U.S. 60, 65 (1983) (“In light of the 

greater potential for deception or confusion in the context of 

certain advertising messages, content-based restrictions on 

commercial speech may be permissible.”). 

Thus, when the Court was confronted for the first time, in 

Zauderer, with the constitutionality of a disclosure 

requirement, it studied and relied on this prior commercial 

speech jurisprudence concerning deception to reach its 

ultimate holding. See Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 651 (“[I]n 

virtually all our commercial speech decisions to date, we 

have emphasized that because disclosure requirements trench 

much more narrowly on an advertiser’s interests than do flat 

prohibitions on speech, warnings or disclaimers might be 

appropriately required in order to dissipate the possibility of 

consumer confusion and deception.” (emphasis added) (citing 

cases)); see also id. at 646 (“Our recent decisions involving 

commercial speech have been grounded in the faith that the 

free flow of commercial information is valuable enough to 

justify imposing on would-be regulators the costs of 

distinguishing the truthful from the false, the helpful from the 

misleading, and the harmless from the harmful.” (emphasis 

added)). Instead of viewing Zauderer in its proper context, 

the court claims Zauderer’s deception-specific language is 

“simply descriptive of the circumstances to which the Court 

applied its new rule.” Maj. Op. at 7. But this conclusion is 

belied by the cases preceding Zauderer as well as the cases 

following it. 

If, when the opinion was issued, there was any doubt 

Zauderer only applied to mandates targeting deception, that 

doubt dissipates given the Supreme Court’s dogged adherence 

to this singular rationale. See, e.g., Peel v. Attorney 

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10

Registration & Disciplinary Comm’n of Ill., 496 U.S. 91, 110 

(1990) (“To the extent that potentially misleading statements 

of private certification or specialization could confuse

consumers, a State might consider . . . requiring a disclaimer 

about the certifying organization or the standards of a 

specialty.”); Ibanez v. Fla. Dep’t of Bus. & Prof’l Regulation,

512 U.S. 136, 146–47 (1994) (noting the hypothetical 

possibility that a different disclaimer “might serve as an 

appropriately tailored check against deception or confusion”); 

Glickman v. Wileman Bros. & Elliott, Inc., 521 U.S. 457, 

490–91 (1997) (Souter, J., dissenting) (“Zauderer thereby 

reaffirmed a longstanding preference for disclosure 

requirements over outright bans, as more narrowly tailored 

cures for the potential of commercial messages to mislead by 

saying too little. But however long the pedigree of such 

mandates may be, and however broad the government’s 

authority to impose them, Zauderer carries no authority for a 

mandate unrelated to the interest in avoiding misleading or 

incomplete commercial messages.” (citations omitted)); 

United States v. United Foods, Inc., 533 U.S. 405, 416 (2001) 

(“There is no suggestion in the case now before us that the 

mandatory assessments imposed to require one group of 

private persons to pay for speech by others are somehow 

necessary to make voluntary advertisements nonmisleading 

for consumers.”); Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz, P.A. v. 

United States, 559 U.S. 229, 250 (2010) (upholding disclosure 

requirement as “reasonably related to the State’s interest in 

preventing deception”)2

; see also Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. 

Reilly, 533 U.S. 525, 576 (2001) (Thomas, J., concurring in 

2

 Significantly, in Milavetz, the Court also declined to adopt the 

government’s overarching description of the rule as bearing a 

reasonable relationship to a “valid state interest.” See Br. for the 

United States at 55, Milavetz, 559 U.S. 229 (2010) (Nos. 08-1119, 

08-1225), 2009 WL 3391429.

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11

part and concurring in the judgment) (“[I]t is more 

‘appropriate to require that a commercial message appear in 

such a form, or include such additional information, warnings, 

and disclaimers, as are necessary to prevent its being 

deceptive.’ Whatever the validity of this reasoning, it is 

limited to the peculiarly commercial harms that commercial 

speech can threaten—i.e., the risk of deceptive or misleading 

advertising.” (citations omitted)); Borgner v. Fla. Bd. of 

Dentistry, 537 U.S. 1080 (2002) (Thomas, J., dissenting to 

denial of certiorari, joined by Ginsburg, J.) (“If the disclaimer 

creates confusion rather than eliminating it, the only possible 

constitutional justification for this speech regulation is

defeated.”).

In R.J. Reynolds, a panel of this court followed 

Zauderer’s text to its logical conclusion: “[B]y its own terms, 

Zauderer’s holding is limited to cases in which disclosure 

requirements are ‘reasonably related to the State’s interest in 

preventing deception of consumers.’” R.J. Reynolds Tobacco 

Co. v. FDA, 696 F.3d 1205, 1213 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (quoting 

Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 651). This court then went on to 

examine Supreme Court jurisprudence following Zauderer—

including Milavetz—to reaffirm that conclusion. The original 

AMI panel was wrong to contradict R.J. Reynolds, and the en 

banc court today is wrong to overrule it. 

Thus, not only did the Supreme Court recognize 

Zauderer’s clarity (and limitations), so too did this court. In 

fact, even the government—in previous filings in this very

case—recognized the clear import of Zauderer. See, e.g.,

Defs.’ Opp’n to Pls.’ Mot. for Prelim. Inj. at 32, Am. Meat 

Inst. v. USDA, 968 F. Supp. 2d 38 (D.D.C. 2013) (No. 13-CV1033), ECF No. 30, reprinted in J.A. 999 (“In order for 

Zauderer to apply to a commercial speech regulation, the 

regulation must be aimed at correcting misleading speech and 

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12

preventing deception of consumers.” (citing Milavetz, 559 

U.S. at 249–50)). But see Tr. of Oral Arg. at 43, Am. Meat. 

Inst., No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. May 19, 2014) (en banc) 

(Government: “[I]t’s simply not a proper reading of 

[Zauderer] to describe it as a case about combatting 

deception.”).

The clear trajectory of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence 

is toward greater protection for commercial speech, not less. 

See, e.g., Milavetz, 559 U.S. at 255 (Thomas, J., concurring in 

part and concurring in the judgment) (“I would be willing to 

reexamine Zauderer and its progeny in an appropriate case to 

determine whether these precedents provide sufficient First 

Amendment protection against government-mandated 

disclosures.”); Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc., 131 S. Ct. 2653, 

2667–72 (2011) (striking down law burdening commercial 

speech under intermediate scrutiny); Nike, Inc. v. Kasky, 539 

U.S. 654, 676 (2003) (Breyer, J., dissenting) (arguing for 

heightened scrutiny to apply to commercial speech when it 

involves a matter of public concern); Lorillard Tobacco Co.,

533 U.S. at 576 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and 

concurring in the judgment) (calling for contentdiscriminatory regulation unrelated to the preservation of the 

fair-bargaining process to be subjected to strict scrutiny). For 

that reason, the government’s litigating position in this case, 

which this court adopts, has been particularly troubling. The 

government has repeatedly attempted to focus the court on 

Appellants’ interests, instead of its own. See Gov’t Supp’l Br. 

at 13–15; Tr. of Oral Arg. at 40, Am. Meat. Inst., No. 13-5281 

(D.C. Cir. May 19, 2014) (en banc). In fact, the government 

does not even mention its own interest in burdening First 

Amendment rights until the very last page of its brief, and 

even then, confines the interest to one sentence that cites the 

original AMI Panel’s opinion, instead of the record. See 

Gov’t Supp’l Br. at 20. This is backwards; the heart of the 

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13

First Amendment analysis begins with the government’s 

justification for interfering with such a fundamental right. 

See, e.g., Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 406–07 (1989) (“It 

is, in short, . . . the governmental interest at stake that helps to 

determine whether a restriction on . . . expression is valid.”). 

The government even goes so far as to argue the 

“applicability of the Zauderer standard does not depend upon 

the government’s justification for the required disclosure 

[and] [i]nstead . . . [is] premised on” the commercial actor’s 

limited interests. Gov’t Supp’l Br. at 5; see also id. at 7 (“But 

the nature of the government’s reason for requiring disclosure 

does not affect whether the Zauderer standard applies.”). 

And at oral argument, the government—before correction by 

the Chief Judge—essentially argued compelled commercial 

disclosures implicate no First Amendment interests at all. See

Tr. of Oral Arg. at 50, Am. Meat. Inst., No. 13-5281 (D.C. 

Cir. May 19, 2014) (en banc) (arguing the analysis might be 

different if “the actual First Amendment interest might start 

to crop up on the other side” (emphasis added)); id. at 50–51 

(stating government is “not interested in . . . quibbling” as to 

whether Appellants have a First Amendment interest); see

also Gov’t Supp’l Br. at 11 (“[D]isclosure requirements are 

subject to First Amendment scrutiny only insofar as they 

threaten to chill protected speech.”). 

Several members of this court seemed to find these 

arguments troubling. See Tr. of Oral Arg. at 40–41, Am. 

Meat. Inst., No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. May 19, 2014) (en banc) 

(Judge Kavanaugh: “This is a First Amendment case. We 

usually don’t start that way[. We] usually start by asking 

what’s the government’s interest in burdening the speaker or 

the speech.”); id. at 50 (Judge Brown: “You don’t think that 

compelling speech is a First Amendment interest?”); id.

(Judge Kavanaugh: “[Y]ou were suggesting that they were 

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14

outside—there was no First Amendment issue at all here.”); 

id. at 51 (Chief Judge Garland: “[I]t’s not quibbling. The 

Supreme Court in Footnote 14 in Zauderer . . . doesn’t say 

[the First Amendment interests implicated by disclosure 

requirements] [a]re nonexistent. Is the government’s position 

that they’re nonexistent?”). Yet, remarkably, the court today 

agrees with the government that the First Amendment no 

longer matters here, as long as a court can agree the 

compelled information is factual and uncontroversial. 

II

Despite the clear protections granted to commercial 

speech since 1972, the court now invents a First Amendment 

standard that provides even less protection than rational basis 

review. To say this result is anomalous is an understatement. 

No one has argued in this case that the government can never 

compel the sellers of products to give notice to consumers. 

The only question here is who bears the burden of 

justification and what level of interest is sufficient. And when 

we are dealing with fundamental First Amendment 

protections, as we are here, the burden is on the government, 

and it is the government that must assert substantial interests. 

See Bd. of Trs. of State Univ. of N.Y. v. Fox, 492 U.S. 469, 

480 (1989) (“[T]he State bears the burden of justifying its 

[commercial speech] restrictions.”) Curiously, the court 

disagrees, salvaging interests the government disclaimed to 

uphold a regulation the government never adequately 

justified. Compelled disclosure, says the court, can “rest on 

other suppositions as opposed to the precise interests put 

forward by the State.” Maj. Op. at 12 

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A

Although we have sometimes characterized the Zauderer 

standard as similar to rational basis review, see R.J. 

Reynolds, 696 F.3d at 1212, even the court acknowledges it is 

essentially an application of Central Hudson’s intermediate 

scrutiny. See Maj. Op. at 16; Kavanaugh Op. at 6–7. And, if 

Zauderer’s import is clear when read alone, and pellucid 

when its analysis is placed in historical context, it is even 

more unmistakable when seen as a specialized subset of 

Central Hudson’s intermediate scrutiny. 

Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service 

Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 557 (1980), clarifies the 

intermediate scrutiny standard applicable to commercial 

speech restrictions: the government’s asserted interest must 

be substantial; the regulation must directly advance that 

interest; and the regulation must be no more extensive than is 

necessary to serve that interest, id. at 564. This standard 

applies not only to speech restrictions but also to compelled 

speech; the right not to speak has been protected 

commercially just as it has been protected generally. See,

e.g., United Foods, Inc., 533 U.S. at 410 (protecting right 

against compelled speech, even if commercial speech is 

ordinarily subject to lesser safeguards); cf. Riley v. Nat’l 

Fed’n of the Blind of N.C., Inc., 487 U.S. 781, 796–97 (1988) 

(“[I]n the context of protected speech, the difference [between 

compelled speech and compelled silence] is without 

constitutional significance, for the First Amendment 

guarantees ‘freedom of speech,’ a term necessarily 

comprising the decision of both what to say and what not to 

say.”). Thus, the general rule is that government may not 

compel speech without satisfying at least a substantial burden: 

intermediate scrutiny. See Riley, 487 U.S. at 796–97. And 

when the government attempts to compel individuals to 

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express a certain viewpoint, the government’s action is 

subject to an even higher burden: strict scrutiny. See Wooley 

v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705, 714–15 (1977); see also Pac. Gas 

& Elec. Co. v. Pub. Utils. Comm’n of Cal., 475 U.S. 1, 12–15 

(1986); Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 650. 

Zauderer’s narrowly crafted exception to this rule does 

not offer a dispensation from Central Hudson’s intermediate 

scrutiny. Rather the government’s burden under intermediate 

scrutiny is effectively met when the government commands 

purely factual and noncontroversial disclosures to prevent 

deceptive advertising.3 See Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 651. 

Zauderer is, in essence, a shortcut, “where several of Central

Hudson’s elements have already been established.” AMI 

Supp’l Br. at 9. 

To illustrate: Under Central Hudson, the government 

must first assert a substantial interest. Preventing inherent or 

actual deception in commercial advertising will always be 

such a substantial interest, so Zauderer satisfies the first 

element. Next, when a government’s disclosure mandate is 

reasonably related to its deception interest—as Zauderer

requires—we can be assured the disclosure will directly 

advance that interest; in other words, a reasonably related 

curative disclosure will necessarily make the deceptive 

advertisement less misleading. Finally, a disclosure 

requirement will be less restrictive than an outright ban, or no 

more extensive than necessary to cure the deception. 

3

 When compelled disclosures do not contain “purely factual and 

uncontroversial information” to correct deception in advertising, 

strict scrutiny applies. Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 651; accord Pac. Gas 

& Elec. Co., 475 U.S. at 12–15. 

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When the government’s interest is not in curing deceptive 

advertising, however, Zauderer does not apply. The 

commercial speech “may be restricted only in the service of a 

substantial . . . interest” articulated by the government, and 

“only through means that directly advance that interest.” 

Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 638 (citing Central Hudson, 447 U.S. at 

566); see also In re R.M.J., 455 U.S. at 203 (noting when a 

statement is not misleading in any way—real, inherent, or 

potential—the Court mandates that the state’s authority be 

subject to serving a “substantial interest,” interfering with 

speech only in proportion to the interest served, and being 

narrowly drawn). Central Hudson—without any shortcuts—

applies to disclosures that target interests other than 

deception. 

Unsatisfied with eviscerating Zauderer’s protective 

limits, the court proceeds to lay the groundwork to 

disembowel Central Hudson as well. See, e.g., Maj. Op. at 14 

(“Zauderer’s method of evaluating fit differs in wording 

[from Central Hudson], though perhaps not significantly in 

substance . . . .”). By holding the amorphous interests in 

today’s case to be “substantial” (and questioning whether any 

governmental interest could fail to be substantial, except those 

already found to be trivial, see Maj. Op. at 8–9), the court 

effectively absolves the government of any burden. Any 

interest that is not “trivial” will do. 

B

Although the court declines to “consider to what extent a 

mandate reviewed under Zauderer can rest on other 

suppositions as opposed to the precise interests put forward 

by the State,” Maj. Op. at 12, it nonetheless relies on interests 

the agency never asserted and even denied were rationales for 

the rule. This takes the evil of post hoc rationalization to a 

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whole new level. And the court forgets that it is assessing the 

propriety of administrative action, when a reviewing court is 

limited to the administrative record and must judge the rule 

“solely by the grounds invoked by the agency.” Chenery, 332 

U.S. at 196; see also Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n of U.S., Inc. 

v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 50 (1983) (“It 

is well-established that an agency’s action must be upheld, if 

at all, on the basis articulated by the agency itself.”). If the 

grounds asserted by the agency “are inadequate or improper, 

the court is powerless to affirm the administrative action by 

substituting what it considers to be a more adequate or proper 

basis.” Chenery, 332 U.S. at 196. The court violates this 

bedrock principle of administrative law today. 

The court asserts “AMI makes no claim that the agency’s 

exercises of its discretion are of constitutional moment . . . .” 

Maj. Op. at 12. This is more of a non sequitur than an 

explanation.4

 The litigants have assumed the usual rules 

applied. The court has changed the game, invoking 

exceptions which played no role in the panel decision. But 

here the court’s exceptions only prove the wisdom of the 

rules. First, that the statute itself mandates a course of action 

is of no moment. This is often the case. See, e.g., R.J.

Reynolds, 696 F.3d at 1208–09. Moreover, Chenery applies 

with equal force to statutory interpretation. N. Air Cargo v. 

U.S. Postal Serv., 674 F.3d 852, 860 (D.C. Cir. 2012). 

Second, the “statutorily compelled” exception assumes the 

4

 See AMI’s First Amended Complaint, Am. Meat Inst. v. USDA,

968 F. Supp. 2d 38 (D.D.C. 2013) (No. 13-CV-1033), ECF No. 15, 

reprinted in J.A. 25–26, ¶¶ 72–79; Am. Meat Inst. v. USDA, 746 

F.3d 1065, 1067–68 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (“[AMI] challenged the 2013 

rule in district court as a violation of the COOL statute and the First 

Amendment.”); Maj Op. at 5 (“AMI argues that the 2013 rule 

violates its First Amendment right to freedom of speech . . . .”). 

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agency decision—even if premised on a debatable or 

erroneous ground—would be unchanged by the “useless 

formality” of court review. Henry J. Friendly, Chenery

Revisited: Reflections on Reversal and Remand of 

Administrative Orders, 2 DUKE L.J. 199, 210 (1969). But the 

agency’s specific implementation is not compelled by the 

statute. Indeed, this is the agency’s second try.

Likewise, if the court means to rely on the background 

presumption of the constitutionality of Congressional 

legislation, that presumption is consistent with rational basis 

review, Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641, 653 (1966), but 

clearly improper where heightened constitutional scrutiny is 

demanded, see, e.g., Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. FCC, 512 

U.S. 622, 664–67 (1994). Heightened scrutiny requires 

considerable and specific Congressional findings to establish 

that the government’s asserted interest is substantial. See id.

at 666. Thus, even accepting the court’s doubtful assertion 

that it can completely ignore the rulemaking record in this 

case, the government’s burden could never be met by the 

“hypothesized justifications” based on a few scattered 

comments in the legislative record. Thompson v. W. States 

Med. Ctr., 535 U.S. 357, 373 (2002); see also Kimel v. Fla. 

Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62, 89 (2000) (noting that the 

government’s burden under heightened scrutiny is not met 

where the legislative record consists “almost entirely of 

isolated sentences clipped from floor debates and legislative 

reports”).

In any event, the mere presence of substantial 

Congressional findings is not alone sufficient. The Central

Hudson test requires “the Government not only to identify 

specifically a substantial interest to be achieved . . . but also to 

prove that the regulation directly advances that interest and is 

not more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest.” 

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Thompson, 535 U.S. at 374. The “congruence and 

proportionality” test announced in Central Hudson—and

applied in other heightened scrutiny cases—is not satisfied 

where the legislative record offers only “scant support” for 

Congress’s conclusions. See Fla. Prepaid Postsecondary 

Educ. Expense Bd. v. Coll. Sav. Bank, 527 U.S. 627, 645–47 

(1999).

The government’s only asserted interest for the rule 

throughout this litigation—after abandoning its half-hearted 

post hoc deception rationale—has been a consistently vague 

one: “The government’s interest is in providing consumers 

with information that those consumers can use to make 

choices about the food that they will . . . purchase and serve to 

their families or eat themselves.” Tr. of Oral Arg. at 41, Am.

Meat. Inst., No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. May 19, 2014) (en banc); 

see also Gov’t Supp’l Br. at 20 (referring to “the benefit of 

allowing customers to know the country of origin of their 

food” as the government interest); Mandatory Country of 

Origin Labeling, 74 Fed. Reg. 2658, 2683 (Jan. 15, 2009) 

[hereinafter “2009 Rule”] (noting “interest by some

consumers in the country of origin of food” (emphasis 

added)). Yet the government has never explained precisely 

why origin information assists with customer preferences, 

only suggesting “the production steps in each country may

embody latent (hidden or unobservable) attributes, which may

be important to individual consumers.” Mandatory Country 

of Origin Labeling, 78 Fed. Reg. 31,367, 31,377 (May 24, 

2013) [hereinafter “2013 Rule”] (emphasis added). The 

government never suggests, explains, or supports what those 

attributes might be. More importantly, the government never 

explains why coerced speech is the only solution. 

The agency’s stated ambiguous and amorphous interest in 

giving consumers more information is undoubtedly 

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insufficient to survive even under an expanded-Zauderer

regime. See Int’l Dairy Foods Ass’n v. Amestoy, 92 F.3d 67, 

74 (2d Cir. 1996) (holding “consumer curiosity alone is not a 

strong enough state interest to sustain the compulsion of even 

an accurate, factual statement . . . in a commercial context”); 

accord Nat’l Elec. Mfrs. Ass’n v. Sorrell, 272 F.3d 104, 115 

n.6 (2d Cir. 2001); see also Kavanaugh Op. at 3 (conceding 

“it is plainly not enough for the Government to say simply 

that it has a substantial interest in giving consumers 

information”). By applying Zauderer to this case, the court 

invents a new standard that, in practice, is even more relaxed 

than rational basis review. Now, commercial disclosure 

mandates are subject only to rational basis review minus any 

legitimate justification. See Tr. of Oral Arg. at 85, Am. Meat. 

Inst., No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. May 19, 2014) (en banc) (“[I]f 

you accept the panel’s ruling here, this is rational basis minus, 

and when you are talking about where speech is compelled, 

you have to apply some standard other than that there be any 

interest in the air.”). Undaunted, the court borrows the res 

ipsa loquitur doctrine from tort law to conclude the “selfevident tendency of a disclosure mandate to assure that 

recipients get the mandated information,” Maj. Op. at 15, 

satisfies the government’s “burden of showing that 

[compelled disclosure] advances its interest in making the . . . 

information accessible to the recipients,” Maj. Op. at 15. 

Seriously? With logic like this, who needs a Ministry of 

Truth?5

 However, should this fog of airy circumlocutions 

prove too frustratingly elusive, the government need not 

justify its actions at all. As noted, the court is willing to 

change the rules so it may selectively rely on the legislative 

record of the underlying statute, while disregarding the 

agency rulemaking challenged in this case. For the court to 

sua sponte rely on legislative history instead of either the 

5 See GEORGE ORWELL, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949). 

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regulatory text or the rulemaking record reverses the poles of 

administrative law. See Tr. of Oral Arg. at 38, Am. Meat. 

Inst., No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. May 19, 2014) (en banc) (“The 

two interests that the panel identified are both interests that 

the government has expressly disclaimed. It would be a 

remarkable thing for this Court to apply Zauderer in those 

circumstances given the government’s expressed disclaiming 

of those interests.”); see also Alex Kozinski, Should Reading 

Legislative History Be an Impeachable Offense?, 31 SUFFOLK 

U. L. REV. 807, 812–13 (1998) (noting, among other things, 

that legislative history “is often contradictory, giving courts a 

chance to pick and choose those bits which support the result 

the judges want to reach”); Patricia M. Wald, Some

Observations on the Use of Legislative History in the 1981 

Supreme Court Term, 68 IOWA L. REV. 195, 214 (1983) 

(“[C]iting legislative history is still . . . akin to looking over a 

crowd and picking out your friends.”).

The result is a jumble, a messy amalgam of standards, 

legislative history, and administrative procedure. The court is 

so committed to upholding this rule that it concludes “several 

aspects of the government’s interest in country-of-origin 

labeling for food combine to make the interest substantial: 

the context and long history of country-of-origin disclosures 

to enable consumers to choose American-made products; the 

demonstrated consumer interest in extending country-oforigin labeling to food products; and the individual health 

concerns and market impacts that can arise in the event of a 

food-borne illness outbreak.” Maj. Op. at 9. On inspection, 

each of these “aspects,” upon which the court so heavily 

leans, is foreclosed by history, governmental concession, and 

the record. 

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i

Contrary to the court’s assertions, the “long history” of 

country-of-origin labeling cannot support the government’s 

interest here. The court claims the rule’s “historical pedigree . 

. . lifts it well above ‘idle curiosity.’” Maj. Op. at 10. 

However, in the First Amendment context, which has been 

steadily evolving since the late 1800s, history is not “telling,” 

Maj. Op. at 10; rather, it is an especially poor substitute for 

reasoned judgment. The Supreme Court’s general reluctance 

to accept any free speech claims at the time country-of-origin 

labeling began certainly bears on the issue. See David M. 

Rabbant, The First Amendment in Its Forgotten Years, 90 

YALE L.J. 514, 523 (1981) (“The overwhelming majority of 

prewar decisions in all jurisdictions rejected free speech 

claims, often by ignoring their existence.”). 

Modern “commercial speech” doctrine did not begin until 

the 1970s, when the Supreme Court formally extended First 

Amendment protection to commercial speech. See Va. State 

Bd. of Pharmacy, 425 U.S. at 762. That “Congress has been 

imposing [country-of-origin] mandates since 1890,” Maj. Op. 

at 10, eighty-six years before commercial speech received 

explicit protection, thus tells us very little about the practice’s 

constitutionality. The Court’s terminology in these early 

years was something of a self-fulfilling prophecy; what we 

now call “commercial speech,” the court simply referred to as 

“commercial advertising” or some other business activity. 

See, e.g., Valentine v. Chrestensen, 316 U.S. 52, 54 (1942) 

(denying protection for “purely commercial advertising”); 

Halter v. Nebraska, 205 U.S. 34, 41, 45 (1907) (referring to 

“mere advertisement”); see also Alex Kozinski & Stuart 

Banner, Response, The Anti-History and Pre-History of 

Commercial Speech, 71 TEX. L. REV. 747, 756–57 (1993) 

(“But before 1971, no judge thought of the thing as 

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24

commercial speech—they called it ‘advertising’ . . . , or 

‘soliciting and canvassing,’ or some such term that denoted a 

business activity rather than a form of expression.”). This 

linguistic choice not only reflected the court’s underlying 

thoughts and assumptions (i.e., that advertising was 

permissibly regulated as business conduct) but also likely 

influenced the litigating positions of parties. Litigants rarely 

raised First Amendment challenges to advertising 

restrictions—instead making substantive due process 

arguments by asserting restrictions affected their business 

rights.

For example, in 1907, when faced with the constitutional 

validity of a state law criminalizing the use of an American 

flag emblem on labels, the litigants and the Court “ignored 

potential free speech claims.” Rabbant, supra at 531; see 

Halter, 205 U.S. at 38; Kozinski & Banner, supra at 763 (“No 

speech-related claim was made in Halter, probably . . . 

because the litigants didn’t conceive of bottle-labeling as 

speech.”). Rather, the defendants attacked the statute as 

repugnant to the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, 

challenges rejected by the Court. See Halter, 205 U.S. at 39; 

see also Rabbant, supra at 531 n.69. When the Court 

repeatedly referred to “mere advertisement,” Halter, 205 U.S. 

at 41, 45, it did so in the context of analyzing substantive due 

process and property rights, not speech. 

 When at last the Supreme Court formally addressed the 

protection of “advertising” (again, its term), it noted, without 

citation, it was “clear that the Constitution imposes no such 

restraint on government as respects purely commercial 

advertising.” Chrestensen, 316 U.S. at 54. “[T]his suggests 

that in 1942, the Justices considered the question whether the 

First Amendment has any application to advertising to be . . . 

easily resolved and not very important.” Kozinski & Banner, 

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supra at 758. One reason for this certainty again may have 

been the concept that advertising was more a business 

activity—subject to the “then-recently-adopted deferential 

economic substantive due process jurisprudence”—than 

speech. See id. Again, given both Christensen and the 

prevailing view that advertising was conduct and not speech, 

the court’s citation to early labeling regimes tells us nothing 

useful.

Additionally, the early years of free speech jurisprudence 

saw laws routinely upheld that by today’s standards clearly 

interfere with commercial speech. See, e.g., Ex parte Rapier,

143 U.S. 110 (1892); Ex parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727 (1877). 

In the postal cases of the late 1800s, the Supreme Court 

focused on the right of Congress to exclude injurious matters 

from the mail, including materials advertising lotteries and 

other vices. The mailing prohibition’s long history (since 

1866!)—and the Court’s decisions affirming it—did not stop 

the Supreme Court from later rejecting the laws under the new 

commercial speech doctrine. See, e.g., Bolger, 463 U.S. at 

72–76.

Furthermore, this court’s reliance on Burson v. Freeman,

504 U.S. 191 (1992), to support its history rationale is 

inapposite. First, Burson was a “rare case,” id. at 211, that 

involved a reconciliation of two competing fundamental 

rights—the right to engage in political discourse and the right 

to vote, “a right at the heart of our democracy,” id. at 198. 

But Burson relied on history only to “demonstrate the 

necessity of restricted areas in and around polling places.” Id.

at 200. And, like Zauderer, Burson approves a limited 

intrusion on protected activity to prevent fraud. Id. at 199. 

Voter intimidation and election fraud were historically 

rampant, but the 1890 restrictions had ameliorated these 

problems. Id. at 207–08. In contrast, this court invokes the 

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long history of country-of-origin labeling laws to argue the 

necessity of the government’s intrusion is self-evident. 

Burson simply does not stand for the proposition that a timetested consensus can be a proxy for the substantiality of the 

government’s interest in the First Amendment context. If that 

were true, the commercial speech doctrine would never have 

developed at all. 

Similarly, Edenfield v. Fane, 507 U.S. 761 (1993), 

contradicts this court’s actions and its analysis. In Edenfield,

the Supreme Court emphasized the need to “identify with care 

the interests the State itself asserts” and noted “[u]nlike 

rational-basis review, the Central Hudson standard does not 

permit us to supplant the precise interests put forward by the 

State with other suppositions.” Id. at 768. But that is exactly 

what the court does here. 

ii

The court concludes protectionism or patriotism is the 

true motive of the challenged country-of-origin labeling 

scheme, even if it is only acknowledged with a sly wink by 

the government. See Kavanaugh Op. at 5 (“[T]he Executive 

Branch has refrained during this litigation from expressly 

articulating its . . . interest in supporting American farmers 

and ranchers in order to justify this law, apparently because of 

the international repercussions that might ensue.”). The court 

assumes—perhaps correctly—that absent the constraints of 

various trade treaties, Congress would have an interest in 

promoting American products. See Maj. Op. at 9 (noting 

origin labeling “enable[s] consumers to choose Americanmade products”); Kavanaugh Op. at 6 (asserting the 

government “has a substantial interest in this case in 

supporting American farmers and ranchers against their 

foreign competitors”). But, that interest would constitute a 

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27

substantial justification for coercing speech only if the 

government had actually asserted it, and if voluntary action 

and direct government speech were obviously inadequate. 

Significantly, the court ignores the agency’s disclaimers in 

this case. Not only has the agency failed to raise or support 

any protectionist motive, it has, in fact, consistently denied 

one. See, e.g., 2013 Rule, 78 Fed. Reg. at 31,376 (“The 

availability of [country-of-origin labeling] information does 

not imply that there will necessarily be any change in 

aggregate consumer demand or in demand for products of one 

origin versus others.”); 2009 Rule, 74 Fed. Reg. at 2670 

(“[W]hile some U.S. producers may hope to receive benefits 

from the [country-of-origin labeling] program for products of 

U.S. origin, the purpose of the . . . program is to provide 

consumers with origin information.” (emphasis added)); 

Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling, 68 Fed. Reg. 61,944, 

61,955 (Oct. 30, 2003) [hereinafter “2003 Proposed Rule”] 

(“We find little evidence to support the notion that 

consumers’ stated preferences for country of origin labeling 

will lead to increased demands for covered commodities 

bearing the U.S.-origin label.”); 68 Fed. Reg. at 61,956 (“The 

lack of participation in government-provided programs for 

labeling products of U.S. origin provides evidence that 

consumers do not have a strong preference for country of 

origin labeling.”); 68 Fed. Reg. at 61,956 (“The results from . 

. . surveys indicate that the number of consumers with strong 

preferences for U.S.-origin labeled products is not sufficient 

for U.S. producers to benefit from labeling.”); accord Tr. of 

Oral Arg. at 53, Am. Meat. Inst., No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. May 

19, 2014) (en banc) (explaining government is not asserting 

an interest in helping American ranchers). 

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iii

The court credits the government with acting sub silentio 

on the belief that food products produced wholly in the USA 

are safer than those produced even partly outside the USA. 

See Maj. Op. at 9 (asserting interest in “individual health 

concerns and market impacts that can arise in the event of a 

food-borne illness outbreak”); id. at 11 (“Supporting members 

of Congress identified the statute’s purpose as enabling 

customers to make informed choices based on characteristics 

of the products they wish to purchase, including United States 

supervision of the entire production process for health and 

hygiene.”) Again, not only has the government failed to raise 

or support any motive in consumer health and safety, it has, in 

fact, consistently eschewed that interest as supporting the rule.

See, e.g., Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling, 78 Fed. 

Reg. 31,367, 31,372 (May 24, 2013) (noting the country-oforigin labeling program “is not food safety related”); 2009 

Rule, 74 Fed. Reg. at 2679 (“[T]he [country-of-origin 

labeling] program is neither a food safety [n]or traceability 

program, but rather a consumer information program. Food 

products, both imported and domestic, must meet the food 

safety standards of the FDA and [other agencies]. Food 

safety and traceability are not the stated intent of the rule . . . . 

”); 74 Fed. Reg. at 2683 (rejecting commenters’ suggestions 

that country-of-origin labeling would provide “food safety 

benefits to consumers” because the program “does not address 

food safety issues”); 2003 Proposed Rule, 68 Fed. Reg. at 

61,956 (noting that although some evidence suggests 

“consumers may use country of origin labeling as a proxy for 

food safety information,” country of original labeling “does 

not provide valid information regarding food safety”). This 

undercuts the court’s claim that “it seems reasonable for 

Congress to anticipate that many consumers will prefer food 

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that had been continuously under a particular government’s 

direct scrutiny.” Maj. Op. at 11. 

Even the anecdotes in the legislative record do not, as the 

court contends, “broadly suggest[] the utility of [country-oforigin] disclosures in the event of any disease outbreak known 

to have a specific country of origin, foreign or domestic.” 

Maj. Op. at 11–12. Rather, the Agency also discredited this 

very purpose: “Appropriate preventative measures and 

effective mechanisms to recall products in the event of 

contamination incidents are the means used to protect the 

health of the consuming public . . . .” 2009 Rule, 74 Fed. 

Reg. at 2683; see id. at 2679 (rejecting commenters’ 

suggestions that the origin labeling program is “critical to 

respond to outbreaks of food borne illness”); see also 

Kavanaugh Op. at 3 (“[T]he Government cannot advance a 

traditional . . . health . . . or safety interest in this case because 

a country-of-origin disclosure requirement obviously does not 

serve [that] interest[].”). The court invokes a health and 

safety interest—even over the government’s adamant 

objections—because health and safety will usually qualify as 

a substantial interest. But the court forgets that the interest 

must at least be one asserted by the government—and 

certainly not one rejected by it. 

III

This case is really not about country-of-origin labeling. 

It is not even about patriotism or protectionism. And it is 

certainly not about health and safety. What is apparent from 

the record and the briefing is that this is a case about seeking 

competitive advantage. One need only look at the parties and 

amici to recognize this rule benefits one group of American 

farmers and producers, while interfering with the practices 

and profits of other American businesses who rely on 

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imported meat to serve their customers. See, e.g., Intervenors 

Br. at i (noting the United States Cattlemen’s Association 

“present[s] an effective voice for the U.S. cattle industry and 

promot[es] ranching in the United States”); id. (“[United 

States Cattlemen’s Association] works to promote the 

interests of cattlemen in the United States on issues such as 

the Country of Origin Labeling . . . program”); id. (explaining 

the National Farmers Union is a “national organization 

representing the interests of farmers and ranchers across the 

United States . . . by advocating the policy positions 

developed by its members . . . on issues such as [country-oforigin labeling]”); Supp’l Br. of Amici Curiae Food & Water 

Watch, et al., at iv (describing amici as “intimately involved 

in, and [having] spent considerable resources on, advocating 

for . . . the development of the [country-of-origin labeling] 

rule at issue in this case”); see, e.g., Br. of Amicus Curiae 

Government of Canada at 3–4, 9 (“[P]arts of the U.S. industry 

that produce both U.S.-origin and mixed-origin meat face” 

much higher costs than slaughterhouses that rely on domestic 

livestock—a cost differential the WTO concluded has a 

“detrimental impact . . . [on the] competitive position of 

Canadian cattle and hogs in the U.S. market [that] could not 

be explained by the need to” inform consumers). Even the 

court’s citation to the congressional record underscores this 

point. See Maj. Op. at 11 (citing statements from U.S. 

representatives hailing from Western states, including Oregon 

(Hooley and Wu) and California (Bono)). Such a 

disproportionate burden “stands in sharp conflict with the 

First Amendment’s command that government regulation of 

speech must be measured in minimums, not maximums.” 

Riley, 487 U.S. at 790. 

Of course the victors today will be the victims tomorrow, 

because the standard created by this case will virtually ensure 

the producers supporting this labeling regime will one day be 

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saddled with objectionable disclosure requirements (perhaps 

to disclose cattle feed practices; how their cattle are raised; 

whether their cattle were medically treated and with what; the 

environmental effects of beef production; or even the union 

status or wage levels of their employees). Only the fertile 

imaginations of activists will limit what disclosures successful 

efforts from vegetarian, animal rights, environmental, 

consumer protection, or other as-yet-unknown lobbies may 

compel. 

If patriotism or protectionism would sell products, 

producers and sellers would happily festoon their products 

with Made in the USA or Product of the USA labels. Thus, 

any consumer’s desire to buy American could be easily 

satisfied by voluntary action. See, e.g., 2009 Rule, 74 Fed. 

Reg. at 2682. Yet today this court offers to facilitate blatant 

rent-seeking behavior by announcing its willingness to intuit 

the government’s unspoken agendas—perhaps one of the 

most dissembling things about the court’s opinion. But, as 

bad as it is for the court to invent rationales the government 

does not actually offer, the reality is worse. 

By substantiating the government’s nebulous interests, 

the court essentially permits the government to commandeer 

the speech of others. There is no limiting principle for such a 

flimsy interest as the government asserted in this case. See 

Tr. of Oral Arg. at 28, Am. Meat. Inst., No. 13-5281 (D.C. 

Cir. May 19, 2014) (en banc) (“There is absolutely no 

stopping point to [the government’s consumer-interest] 

argument.”); id. (Judge Kavanaugh: “The government wants 

no stopping point to that argument.”). More alarmingly, such 

self-referential interests can be marshalled in aid of any sort 

of crony capitalism or ideological arm-twisting. This labeling 

scheme is only one example. 

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The scheme is not designed to inform consumers; it is 

designed to take away the price advantage enjoyed by one 

segment of a domestic industry. The government’s alleged 

interest in providing information that some consumers may 

desire will actually result in higher prices. See, e.g., Br. of 

Amicus Curiae Grocery Manufacturers Association at 11 

(“The severe costs that the COOL requirements will impose 

on GMA’s members are entirely out of proportion to the 

ethereal goal of affording consumers more information . . . 

.”); see id. at 11–12 (“If the COOL requirements are 

sustained, that sort of supply-chain management will become 

extremely costly or, for some manufacturers, cost prohibitive . 

. . .”). Forcing meat packers to pay a premium for domestic 

beef will raise costs for consumers. Query whether the 

protections of the First Amendment should be abrogated for 

some businesses in order to benefit other businesses. That 

approach not only swallows important First Amendment 

protections, it does so in order to discriminate in favor of 

particular segments of particular industries. The first 

Amendment ought not be construed to allow the government 

to compel speech in the service of speculative or hypothetical 

interests for purely private benefits. Once we articulate such 

a principle of constitutional adjudication, there is really no 

limit to what government may compel. And if this example 

of cronyism is okay, who will balk at any other economic or 

ideological discrimination? The only limit the court seemed 

to recognize during the oral argument was labels that overtly 

promote invidious discrimination,6

 but protectionism, 

patriotism, and environmentalism will be entirely permissible 

subjects for compelled labeling, especially where the motive 

6 See Tr. of Oral Arg. at 56, Am. Meat. Inst., No. 13-5281 (D.C. Cir. 

May 19, 2014) (en banc) (Chief Judge Garland making the 

government’s point that “it [is] a violation of the Constitution to 

discriminate on the basis of national origin among people already in 

the United States”). 

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can remain unspoken. A generous swath of protection the 

First Amendment once afforded to businesses against such 

encroachment has now been ceded to the government’s 

allegedly good intentions. 

IV

The court has taken a rationale developed in a specific 

context and applicable to a narrow subset of government 

activity—regulating speech that could be entirely 

prohibited—and fashioned a new, broad area of government 

power in which naked compulsion, once prohibited by the 

First Amendment, no longer requires any credible 

justification. The court accomplishes this extraordinary feat 

by plucking the phrase “factual and uncontroversial” out of 

the Zauderer analysis while pointedly ignoring another 

limitation: that the compelled disclosure must be justified and 

not unduly burdensome. This is a move which tends to 

dissolve the whole idea of a right not to speak. It is strongly 

reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’s criticism of those who reject 

natural law and traditional morality: 

There has never been, and never will be, a radically new 

[judgment] of value in the history of the world. What 

purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) 

‘ideologies,’ all consist of fragments from the [natural 

law] itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the 

whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation . . . . 

C.S. LEWIS, THE ABOLITION OF MAN 43–44 (Harper Collins 

2001) (1944). That is what the court now announces. What 

was merely an observation in the well-ordered framework of 

Zauderer now becomes an overarching principle that 

subsumes the First Amendment. And it does so to facilitate 

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coercion and the imposition of orthodoxy. What is more 

uncontroversial than orthodoxy? 

There can be no right not to speak when the government 

may compel its citizens to act as mouthpieces for whatever it 

deems factual and non-controversial and the determination of 

what is and what is not is left to the subjective and ad hoc 

whims of government bureaucrats or judges. In a world in 

which the existence of truth and objective reality are daily 

denied, and unverifiable hypotheses are deemed indisputable, 

what is claimed as fact may owe more to faith than science, 

and what is or is not controversial will lie in the eye of the 

beholder.

AMI’s counsel began the en banc argument by positing 

an absurdity no sensible court could countenance—that 

Zauderer somehow permits the government to compel speech 

based on “any interest, no matter how articulated, no matter 

how speculative.” Today, the court’s commitment to countryof-origin labeling leads it to willfully distort the fundamental 

holding and limitations of Zauderer and a virtually unbroken 

line of Supreme Court precedent to do exactly that—a 

perniciously Procrustean solution that hacks the First 

Amendment down to fit in the government’s hip pocket. I 

will not join the carnage. 

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