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Page Number: 48

6 

BARR v. AMERICAN ASSN. OF POLITICAL  
CONSULTANTS, INC. 
Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

suit,” they have never complained of unequal treatment as
such.  Ante, at 23.  The plaintiffs point to the government-
debt  exception  only  to  show  that  the  government  lacks  a
compelling interest in restricting their speech.  It isn’t even 
clear  the  plaintiffs  would  have  standing  to  challenge  the
government-debt exception.  They came to court asserting
a right to speak, not a right to be free from other speakers. 
Severing and voiding the government-debt exception does 
nothing to address the injury they claim; after today’s rul-
ing, federal law bars the plaintiffs from using robocalls to
promote  political  causes  just  as  stoutly  as  it  did  before.
What is the point of fighting this long battle, through many
years and all the way to the Supreme Court, if the prize for
winning is no relief at all? 

A severance remedy not only fails to help the plaintiffs, it 
harms strangers to this suit.  Just five years ago, Congress
expressly authorized robocalls to cell phones to collect gov-
ernment-backed debts.  Yet, today, the Court reverses that
decision and outlaws the entire industry.  It is highly unu-
sual  for  judges  to  render  unlawful  conduct  that  Congress 
has  explicitly  made  lawful—let  alone  to  take  such  an  ex-
traordinary  step  without  warning  to  those  who  have  or-
dered their lives and livelihoods in reliance on the law, and 
without  affording  those  individuals  any  opportunity  to  be
heard.  This assertion of power strikes me as raising serious 
separation of powers questions, and it marks no small de-
parture from our usual reliance on the adversarial process. 
Nor  does  the  analogy  to  equal  protection  doctrine  solve 
the problem.  That doctrine promises equality of treatment,
whatever  that  treatment  may  be.    The  First  Amendment 
isn’t so neutral.  It pushes, always, in one direction: against 
governmental restrictions on speech.  Yet, somehow, in the 
name  of  vindicating  the  First  Amendment,  our  remedial 
course today leads to the unlikely result that not a single
person  will  be  allowed  to  speak  more  freely  and,  instead, 
more speech will be banned.