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BARR v. AMERICAN ASSN. OF POLITICAL  
CONSULTANTS, INC. 
Opinion of KAVANAUGH, J. 

the Court stated that the “law as originally enacted in 1932 
contained no capital punishment provision.”  United States 
v. Jackson, 390 U. S. 570, 586 (1968).  And when Congress 
amended the Act in 1934 to add the death penalty, “the stat-
ute  was  left  substantially  unchanged  in  every  other  re-
spect.”  Id., at 587–588.  The Court found it “difficult to im-
agine a more compelling case for severability.”  Id., at 589.  
So too here. 
  In sum, the text of the Communications Act’s severability 
clause requires that the Court sever the 2015 government-
debt exception from the remainder of the statute.  And even 
if the text of the severability clause did not apply here, the 
presumption  of  severability  would  require  that  the  Court 
sever the 2015 government-debt exception from the remain-
der of the statute. 

3 
  One final severability wrinkle remains.  This is an equal-
treatment case, and equal-treatment cases can sometimes 
pose complicated severability questions.   
  The  “First  Amendment  is  a  kind  of  Equal  Protection 
Clause for ideas.”  Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, 575 U. S. 
433, 470 (2015) (Scalia, J., dissenting).  And Congress vio-
lated  that  First  Amendment  equal-treatment  principle  in 
this case by favoring debt-collection robocalls and discrimi-
nating against political and other robocalls.   
   When the constitutional violation is unequal treatment, 
as  it  is  here,  a  court  theoretically  can  cure  that  unequal 
treatment  either  by  extending  the  benefits  or  burdens  to 
the exempted class, or by nullifying the benefits or burdens 
for  all.    See,  e.g.,  Heckler  v.  Mathews,  465  U.  S.  728,  740 
(1984).  Here, for example, the Government would prefer to 
cure  the  unequal  treatment  by  extending  the  robocall  re-
striction and thereby proscribing nearly all robocalls to cell 
phones.    By  contrast,  plaintiffs  want  to  cure  the  unequal 
treatment by nullifying the robocall restriction and thereby