Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-277_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 22

16 

MOODY v. NETCHOICE, LLC 

Opinion of the Court 

of programming) is itself expressive, and intrusion into that
activity must be specially justified under the First Amend-
ment. 

The capstone of those precedents came in Hurley v. Irish-
American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 
515  U. S.  557  (1995),  when  the  Court  considered  (of  all 
things) a parade.  The question was whether Massachusetts 
could require the organizers of a St. Patrick’s Day parade 
to admit as a participant a gay and lesbian group seeking 
to convey a message of “pride.”  Id., at 561.  The Court held 
unanimously  that  the  First  Amendment  precluded  that 
compulsion.  The  “selection  of  contingents  to  make  a  pa-
rade,” it explained, is entitled to First Amendment protec-
tion, no less than a newspaper’s “presentation of an edited 
compilation of [other persons’] speech.”  Id., at 570 (citing 
Tornillo, 418 U. S., at 258).  And that meant the State could 
not  tell  the  parade  organizers  whom  to  include.    Because 
“every  participating  unit  affects  the  message,”  said  the
Court, ordering the group’s admittance would “alter the ex-
pressive content of the[ ] parade.”  Hurley, 515 U. S., at 572– 
573.  The  parade’s  organizers  had  “decided  to  exclude  a 
message [they] did not like from the communication [they]
chose to make,” and that was their decision alone.  Id., at 
574. 

On two other occasions, the Court distinguished Tornillo 
and its progeny for  the flip-side reason—because in those 
cases  the  compelled  access  did  not  affect  the  complaining
party’s own expression.  First, in PruneYard Shopping Cen-
ter v. Robins, 447 U. S. 74 (1980), the Court rejected a shop-
ping mall’s First Amendment challenge to a California law 
requiring  it  to  allow  members  of  the  public  to  distribute 
handbills  on  its  property.    The  mall  owner  did  not  claim 
that he (or the mall) was engaged in any expressive activity. 
Indeed,  as  the  PG&E  Court  later  noted,  he  “did  not  even 
allege  that  he  objected  to  the  content  of  the  pamphlets”
passed  out  at  the  mall.    475  U. S.,  at  12.  Similarly,  in