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Page Number: 12.0

10 

IANCU v. BRUNETTI 

Opinion of the Court 

And once the “immoral or scandalous” bar is interpreted
fairly, it must be invalidated.  The Government just barely 
argues  otherwise.  In  the  last  paragraph  of  its  brief,  the 
Government gestures toward the idea that the provision is 
salvageable  by  virtue  of  its  constitutionally  permissible
applications (in the Government’s view, its applications to 
lewd,  sexually  explicit,  or  profane  marks).    See  id., at  47. 
In  other  words,  the  Government  invokes  our  First 
Amendment  overbreadth  doctrine,  and  asks  us  to  uphold 
the  statute  against  facial  attack  because  its  unconstitu-
tional  applications  are  not  “substantial”  relative  to  “the
statute’s plainly legitimate sweep.”  Stevens, 559 U. S., at 
473  (internal  quotation  marks  omitted).    But  to  begin
with, this Court has never applied that kind of analysis to 
a viewpoint-discriminatory law.  In Tam, for example, we
did  not  pause  to  consider  whether  the  disparagement 
clause might admit some permissible applications (say, to
certain  libelous  speech)  before  striking  it  down.  The 
Court’s  finding  of  viewpoint  bias  ended  the  matter.    And 
similarly, it seems unlikely we would compare permissible 
if  Congress  outright
and 
banned  “offensive”  (or  to  use  some  other  examples,  “divi-
sive” or “subversive”) speech.  Once we have found that a 
law  “aim[s]  at  the  suppression  of ”  views,  why  would  it 

impermissible  applications 

—————— 

argues,  post,  at  3;  it  is  just  broad.  Remember  that  the  dictionaries 
define  it  to  mean  offensive,  disreputable,  exciting  reprobation,  and  so 
forth.  See supra, at 5–6; post, at 3 (accepting those definitions).  Even if 
hived off from “immoral” marks, the category of scandalous marks thus 
includes  both  marks  that  offend  by  the  ideas  they  convey  and  marks 
that offend by their mode of expression.  And its coverage of the former 
means that it discriminates based on viewpoint.  We say nothing at all 
about  a  statute  that  covers  only  the  latter—or,  in  the  Government’s 
more  concrete  description,  a  statute  limited  to  lewd,  sexually  explicit, 
and  profane  marks.    Nor  do  we  say  anything  about  how  to  evaluate 
viewpoint-neutral  restrictions  on  trademark  registration,  see  post,  at 
14–17—because  the  “scandalous”  bar  (whether  or  not  attached  to  the 
“immoral” bar) is not one.