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BARR v. AMERICAN ASSN. OF POLITICAL  
CONSULTANTS, INC. 
Syllabus 

subject matter, or its content.”  Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 
U. S.  92,  95.  Under  this  Court’s  precedents,  content-based  laws  are 
subject to strict scrutiny.  See Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U. S. 155, 
165.  Section  227(b)(1)(A)(iii)’s  robocall  restriction,  with  the  govern-
ment-debt exception, is content based because it favors speech made 
for the purpose of collecting government debt over political and other 
speech.  Pp. 6–7.

(b) The  Government’s  arguments  for  deeming  the  statute  content-
neutral are unpersuasive.  First, §227(b)(1)(A)(iii) does not draw dis-
tinctions based on speakers, and even if it did, that would not “auto-
matically render the distinction content neutral.”  Reed, 576 U. S., at 
170.  Second, the law here focuses on whether the caller is speaking
about a particular topic and not, as the Government contends, simply
on whether the caller is engaged in a particular economic activity.  See 
Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U. S. 552, 563–564.  Third, while “the 
First Amendment does not prevent restrictions directed at commerce 
or conduct from imposing incidental burdens on speech,” this law “does 
not simply have an effect on speech, but is directed at certain content 
and is aimed at particular speakers.”  Id., at 567. 

(c) As  the  Government  concedes,  the  robocall  restriction  with  the 
government-debt exception cannot satisfy strict scrutiny.  The Govern-
ment has not sufficiently justified the differentiation between govern-
ment-debt collection speech and other important categories of robocall 
speech, such as political speech, issue advocacy, and the like.  Pp. 7–9.
JUSTICE  KAVANAUGH,  joined  by  THE  CHIEF  JUSTICE  and  JUSTICE 
ALITO, concluded in Part III that the 2015 government-debt exception
is severable from the underlying 1991 robocall restriction.  The TCPA 
is  part  of  the  Communications  Act,  which  has  contained  an  express 
severability clause since 1934.  Even if that clause did not apply to the 
exception, the presumption of severability would still apply.  See, e.g., 
Free  Enterprise  Fund  v.  Public  Company  Accounting  Oversight  Bd., 
561 U. S. 477.  The remainder of the law is capable of functioning in-
dependently and would be fully operative as a law.  Severing this rel-
atively narrow exception to the broad robocall restriction fully cures
the First Amendment unequal treatment problem and does not raise 
any other constitutional problems.  Pp. 9–24. 

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR concluded that the government-debt exception 
fails under intermediate scrutiny and is severable from the rest of the 
Act.  Pp. 1–2.

JUSTICE BREYER, joined by JUSTICE GINSBURG and JUSTICE KAGAN, 
would have upheld the government-debt exception, but given the con-
trary  majority  view,  agreed  that  the  provision  is  severable  from  the 
rest of the statute.  Pp. 11–12.

JUSTICE  GORSUCH  concluded  that  content-based  restrictions  on