Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-177_b97c.pdf
Page Number: 30

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

17 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

never  claimed  that  the  Policy  Requirement  violates  any-
one’s First Amendment rights apart from their own.  Both 
the District Court and the Court of Appeals decided the case 
on that basis.  The question before us is clear: whether the 
First  Amendment  protects  Americans  when  they  speak 
through  clearly  identified  foreign  affiliates  to  reach  audi-
ences overseas.  See supra, at 8.  Whether the foreign affil-
iates themselves have their own First Amendment rights is 
not at issue.  See Brief for Respondents 36, n. 3. 

Even taken on its own terms, the majority’s blanket as-
sertion about the extraterritorial reach of our Constitution 
does not reflect the current state of the law.  The idea that 
foreign  citizens  abroad  never  have  constitutional  rights  is
not a “bedrock” legal principle.  At most, one might say that
they are unlikely to enjoy very often extraterritorial protec-
tion under the Constitution.  Or one might say that the mat-
ter is undecided.  But this Court has studiously avoided es-
tablishing an absolute rule that forecloses that protection 
in all circumstances. 

In Hernández v. Mesa, 582 U. S. ___ (2017) (per curiam) 
(Hernández I ), for example, we specifically declined to de-
cide the “sensitive” question whether, on the facts then be-
fore  us,  a  Mexican  citizen  standing  on  Mexican  soil  had 
Fourth  Amendment  rights—precisely  because  the  answer
to that extraterritoriality question “may have consequences 
that are far reaching.”  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 5).  Hernández 
later came to this Court again, and we decided the case on 
alternative grounds.  See Hernández II, 589 U. S., at ___– 
___ (slip op., at 19–20).  Were the majority’s categorical rule 
of  (non)extraterritoriality  etched  in  stone,  we  could  have
disposed of Hernández the first time around in a few short 
sentences. 

Nor do the cases that the majority cites support an abso-
lute rule.  See ante, at 3.  The exhaustive review of our prec-
edents  that  we  conducted  in  Boumediene  v.  Bush,  553 
U. S.  723  (2008),  pointed  to  the  opposite  conclusion.    In