Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/09pdf/08-769.pdf
Page Number: 13

Cite as:  559 U. S. ____ (2010) 

9 

Opinion of the Court 

and  our  subsequent  decisions  have  shared  this  under-
standing.  See Osborne v. Ohio, 495 U. S. 103, 110 (1990) 
(describing  Ferber  as  finding  “persuasive”  the  argument 
that the advertising and sale of child pornography was “an
integral  part”  of  its  unlawful  production  (internal  quota-
tion  marks  omitted));  Ashcroft  v.  Free  Speech  Coalition, 
535  U. S.  234,  249–250  (2002)  (noting  that  distribution
and sale “were intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of
children,”  giving  the  speech  at  issue  “a  proximate  link  to 
the  crime  from  which  it  came”  (internal  quotation  marks 
omitted)).

Our decisions in Ferber and other cases cannot be taken 
as  establishing  a  freewheeling  authority  to  declare  new 
categories of speech outside the scope of the First Amend-
ment.  Maybe  there  are  some  categories  of  speech  that 
have been historically unprotected, but have  not yet been
specifically identified or discussed as such in our case law.
But  if  so,  there  is  no  evidence  that  “depictions  of  animal 
cruelty” is among them.  We need not foreclose the future 
recognition  of  such  additional  categories  to  reject  the
Government’s  highly  manipulable  balancing  test  as  a 
means of identifying them. 

III 
Because  we  decline  to  carve  out  from  the  First  Amend-
ment  any  novel  exception  for  §48,  we  review  Stevens’s 
First Amendment challenge under our existing doctrine. 

A 

Stevens  challenged  §48  on  its  face,  arguing  that  any 
conviction secured under the statute would be unconstitu-
tional.  The court below decided the case on that basis, 533 
F. 3d, at 231, n. 13, and we granted the Solicitor General’s
petition for certiorari to determine “whether 18 U. S. C. 48 
is  facially  invalid  under  the  Free  Speech  Clause  of  the
First Amendment,” Pet. for Cert. i.