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Page Number: 14

10  AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY FOUNDATION v. BONTA 

Opinion of the Court 

space to survive.”  Button, 371 U. S., at 433. 

Our more recent decisions confirm the need for tailoring.
In McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, 572 U. S. 
185 (2014), for example, a plurality of the Court explained: 

“In  the  First  Amendment  context,  fit  matters.    Even 
when the Court is not applying strict scrutiny, we still 
require a fit that is not necessarily perfect, but reason-
able; that represents not necessarily the single best dis-
position but one whose scope is in proportion to the in-
terest  served,  that  employs  not  necessarily  the  least
restrictive  means  but  a  means  narrowly  tailored  to 
achieve the desired objective.”  Id., at 218 (internal quo-
tation marks and alterations omitted). 

McCutcheon  is  instructive  here.  A  substantial  relation  is 
necessary but not sufficient to ensure that the government
adequately  considers  the  potential  for  First  Amendment 
harms before requiring that organizations reveal sensitive 
information about their members and supporters.  Where 
exacting scrutiny applies, the challenged requirement must 
be narrowly tailored to the interest it promotes, even if it is 
not the least restrictive means of achieving that end. 

The dissent reads our cases differently.  It focuses on the 
words “broadly stifle” in the quotation from Shelton above, 
and it interprets those words to mean that narrow tailoring
is required only for disclosure regimes that “impose a severe
burden  on  associational  rights.”  Post,  at  13  (opinion  of 
SOTOMAYOR, J.).  Because, in the dissent’s view, the peti-
tioners have not shown such a burden here, narrow tailor-
ing is not required.

We respectfully disagree.  The “government may regulate
in the [First Amendment] area only with narrow specific-
ity,” Button, 371 U. S., at 433, and compelled disclosure re-
gimes are no exception.  When it comes to “a person’s beliefs
and  associations,”  “[b]road  and  sweeping  state  inquiries