Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 906.0

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Unit: $U60

[09-26-01 12:39:04] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 803 (2000)

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Scalia, J., dissenting

speech regulations under fairly strict categorical rules keeps
the starch in the standards for those moments when the daily
politics cries loudest for limiting what may be said”).
Applying the First Amendment’s exacting standards, the
Court has correctly determined that § 505 cannot be upheld
on the theory argued by the Government. Accordingly,
I join the opinion of the Court.

Justice Scalia, dissenting.
I agree with the principal dissent in this case that § 505 of
the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104–104, 110
Stat. 136, 47 U. S. C. § 561 (1994 ed., Supp. III), is supported
I
by a compelling state interest and is narrowly tailored.
write separately to express my view that § 505 can be upheld
in simpler fashion: by ﬁnding that it regulates the business
of obscenity.

To be sure, § 505 and the Federal Communications Com-
mission’s implementing regulation, see 47 CFR § 76.227
(1999), purport to capture programming that is indecent
rather than merely that which is obscene. And I will as-
sume for purposes of this discussion (though it is a highly
fanciful assumption) that none of the transmissions at issue
independently crosses the boundary we have established for
obscenity, see Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15, 24 (1973), so
that the individual programs themselves would enjoy First
Amendment protection.
In my view, however, that assump-
tion does not put an end to the inquiry.

We have recognized that commercial entities which engage
in “the sordid business of pandering” by “deliberately em-
phasiz[ing] the sexually provocative aspects of [their nonob-
scene products], in order to catch the salaciously disposed,”
engage in constitutionally unprotected behavior. Ginzburg
v. United States, 383 U. S. 463, 467, 472 (1966); see also FW/
PBS, Inc. v. Dallas, 493 U. S. 215, 257–258 (1990) (Scalia, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part); Pinkus v. United
States, 436 U. S. 293, 303–304 (1978); Splawn v. California,