Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-1140_5368.pdf
Page Number: 33

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

7 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

the practice of medicine” involve “very different considera-
tions” from those applicable to “trades [such as] locomotive 
engineers  and  barbers”);  Semler  v.  Oregon  Bd.  of  Dental 
Examiners,  294  U. S.  608,  612  (1935)  (upholding  state 
regulation  of  dentistry  given  the  “vital  interest  of  public
health”).  In the name of the First Amendment, the majority 
today treads into territory where the pre-New Deal, as well
as the post-New Deal, Court refused to go. 

The  Court,  in  justification,  refers  to  widely  accepted
First  Amendment  goals,  such  as  the  need  to  protect  the 
Nation  from  laws  that  “ ‘suppress  unpopular  ideas  or 
information’ ”  or  inhibit  the  “ ‘marketplace  of  ideas  in
which truth will ultimately prevail.’ ”  Ante, at 12–13; see 
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 269 (1964).
The  concurrence  highlights  similar  First  Amendment 
interests.  Ante, at 2.  I, too, value this role that the First 
Amendment plays—in an appropriate case.  But here, the 
majority enunciates a general test that reaches far beyond 
the  area  where  this  Court  has  examined  laws  closely  in
the service of those goals.  And, in suggesting that height-
ened scrutiny applies to much economic and social legisla-
tion,  the  majority  pays  those  First  Amendment  goals  a 
serious  disservice  through  dilution.    Using  the  First 
Amendment to strike down economic and social laws that 
legislatures  long  would  have  thought  themselves  free  to
enact  will,  for  the  American  public,  obscure,  not  clarify, 
the true value of protecting freedom of speech. 

B 

Still,  what  about  this  specific  case?    The  disclosure  at 
issue here concerns speech related to abortion.  It involves 
health, differing moral values, and differing points of view.
Thus,  rather than set forth broad, new, First Amendment 
principles,  I  believe  that  we  should  focus  more  directly
upon  precedent  more  closely  related  to  the  case  at  hand.
This Court has more than once considered disclosure laws