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UNITED STATES v. PLAYBOY ENTERTAINMENT
GROUP, INC.
Opinion of the Court

U. S. 726 (1978). No one suggests the Government must be
indifferent to unwanted, indecent speech that comes into the
home without parental consent. The speech here, all agree,
is protected speech; and the question is what standard the
Government must meet in order to restrict it. As we con-
sider a content-based regulation, the answer should be clear:
The standard is strict scrutiny. This case involves speech
alone; and even where speech is indecent and enters the
home, the objective of shielding children does not sufﬁce to
support a blanket ban if the protection can be accomplished
by a less restrictive alternative.

In Sable Communications, for instance, the feasibility of
a technological approach to controlling minors’ access to
“dial-a-porn” messages required invalidation of a complete
statutory ban on the medium.
492 U. S., at 130–131. And,
while mentioned only in passing, the mere possibility that
user-based Internet screening software would “ ‘soon be
widely available’ ” was relevant to our rejection of an over-
broad restriction of indecent cyberspeech. Reno, supra, at
876–877. Compare Rowan v. Post Ofﬁce Dept., 397 U. S.
728, 729–730 (1970) (upholding statute “whereby any house-
holder may insulate himself from advertisements that offer
for sale ‘matter which the addressee in his sole discretion
believes to be erotically arousing or sexually provocative’ ”
(quoting then 39 U. S. C. § 4009(a) (1964 ed., Supp. IV))), with
Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products Corp., 463 U. S. 60, 75
(1983) (rejecting blanket ban on the mailing of unsolicited
contraceptive advertisements). Compare also Ginsberg v.
New York, 390 U. S. 629, 631 (1968) (upholding state statute
barring the sale to minors of material deﬁned as “obscene on
the basis of its appeal to them”), with Butler v. Michigan,
352 U. S. 380, 381 (1957) (rejecting blanket ban of material
“ ‘tending to incite minors to violent or depraved or immoral
acts, manifestly tending to the corruption of the morals of
youth’ ” (quoting then Mich. Penal Code § 343)). Each of
these cases arose in a different context—Sable Communica-