Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-545.pdf
Page Number: 16

12 

GOLAN v. HOLDER 

Opinion of the Court 

Court granted the Attorney General’s motion for summary
judgment.  Golan  v.  Gonzales,  No.  Civ.  01–B–1854,  2005 
WL 914754 (D. Colo., Apr. 20, 2005).  In rejecting petition-
ers’  Copyright  Clause  argument,  the  court  stated  that 
Congress  “has  historically  demonstrated  little  compunc-
tion  about  removing  copyrightable  materials  from  the 
public  domain.”  Id.,  at  *14.    The  court  next  declined  to 
part  from  “the  settled  rule  that  private  censorship  via 
copyright  enforcement  does  not  implicate  First  Amend-
ment concerns.”  Id., at *17. 

The  Court  of  Appeals  for  the  Tenth  Circuit  affirmed  in 
part.  Golan  v.  Gonzales,  501  F. 3d  1179  (2007).    The 
public  domain,  it  agreed,  was  not  a  “threshold  that  Con-
gress” was powerless to “traverse in both directions.”  Id., 
at 1187 (internal quotations marks omitted).  But §514, as
the  Court  of  Appeals  read  our  decision  in  Eldred  v.  Ash-
croft, 537 U. S. 186 (2003), required further First Amend-
ment  inspection,  501  F. 3d,  at  1187.    The  measure  “ ‘al-
tered the traditional contours of copyright protection,’ ” the 
court  said—specifically,  the  “bedrock  principle”  that  once 
works  enter  the  public  domain,  they  do  not  leave.    Ibid. 
(quoting Eldred, 537 U. S., at 221).  The case was remand-
ed with an instruction to the District Court to address the 
First  Amendment  claim  in  light  of  the  Tenth  Circuit’s
opinion.

On  remand,  the  District  Court’s  starting  premise  was 
uncontested:  Section  514  does  not  regulate  speech  on  the 
basis  of  its  content;  therefore  the  law  would  be  upheld  if 
“narrowly tailored to serve a significant government inter-
est.”  611 F. Supp. 2d 1165, 1170–1171 (Colo. 2009) (quot-
ing  Ward  v.  Rock  Against  Racism,  491  U. S.  781,  791 
(1989)).  Summary  judgment  was  due  petitioners,  the 

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entry of summary judgment for the Government on the claim that §514

violates the substantive component of the Due Process Clause.