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Page Number: 34

28 

MOODY v. NETCHOICE, LLC 

Opinion of the Court 

dangers to  free expression, there are few greater than al-
lowing the government to change the speech of private ac-
tors  in  order  to  achieve  its  own  conception  of  speech  nir-
vana.  That is why we have said in so many contexts that
the  government  may  not  “restrict  the  speech  of  some  ele-
ments of our society in order to enhance the relative voice 
of others.”  Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 48–49 (1976) (per 
curiam).  That unadorned interest is not “unrelated to the 
suppression  of  free  expression,”  and  the  government  may 
not pursue it consistent with the First Amendment. 

The Court’s decisions about editorial control, as discussed 
earlier, make that point repeatedly.  See supra, at 18–19. 
Again,  the  question  those  cases  had  in  common  was 
whether the government could force a private speaker, in-
cluding a compiler and curator of third-party speech, to con-
vey views it disapproved.  And in most of those cases, the 
government defended its regulation as yielding greater bal-
ance  in  the  marketplace  of  ideas.    But  the  Court—in 
Tornillo, in PG&E, and again in Hurley—held that such an 
interest could not support the government’s effort to alter
the  speaker’s  own  expression.    “Our  cases  establish,”  the 
PG&E  Court  wrote,  “that  the  State  cannot  advance  some 
points of view by burdening the expression of others.”  475 
U. S., at 20.  So the newspaper, the public utility, the pa-
rade  organizer—whether  acting  “fair[ly]  or  unfair[ly]”—
could exclude the unwanted message, free from government
interference.  Tornillo, 418 U. S., at 258; see United States 
Telecom Assn. v. FCC, 855 F. 3d 381, 432 (CADC 2017) (Ka-
vanaugh,  J.,  dissenting  from  denial  of  rehearing  en  banc) 
(“[E]xcept  in  rare  circumstances,  the  First  Amendment 
does  not  allow  the  Government  to  regulate  the  content
choices of private editors just so that the Government may
enhance certain voices and alter the content available to the 
citizenry”).10 

—————— 

10 Texas claims Turner as a counter-example, but that decision offers