Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-631_2d93.pdf
Page Number: 46

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

4 

rule. 

Much precedent supports this course.  As this Court has 
long explained, a law’s failure to address a wide swath of 
conduct implicating its supposed concern “diminish[es] the 
credibility of the government’s [stated] rationale for [its] re-
strict[ion].”  City of Ladue v. Gilleo, 512 U. S. 43, 52 (1994). 
Or, as the Court has elsewhere put it, the compellingness 
of the government’s putative interest is undermined when
its law “leaves appreciable damage to [the] supposedly vital
interest unprohibited.”  Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. 
v.  Hialeah,  508  U. S.  520,  547  (1993)  (internal  quotation 
marks omitted); see also Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Be-
neficente União do Vegetal, 546 U. S. 418, 433 (2006).  The 
insight is simple:  A law’s failure to cover “significant tracts
of conduct implicating [its] putatively compelling interes[t]
can raise . . . the inference that the . . . claimed interest isn’t 
. . .  so  compelling  after  all.”    Yellowbear  v.  Lampert,  741 
F. 3d 48, 60 (CA10 2014).

That’s not to say the inference is irrebuttable.  The gov-
ernment might, for example, show that the apparent incon-
sistency in its law is justified by some qualitative or quan-
titative  difference  between  the  speech  it  favors  and  the 
speech it disfavors.  See id., at 61.  So if debt collection ro-
bocalls were less invasive of consumer privacy than other 
kinds of robocalls, or if they were inherently rare, an excep-
tion  permitting  debt  collection  calls  might  not  undermine 
the  government’s  claimed  interest  in  banning  other  calls. 
But the government, a party with every incentive and am-
ple resources, has not even tried to suggest conditions like 
those  are  present  here,  and  understandably  so:    The 
government-debt  exception  allows  a  seemingly  infinite 
number  of  robocalls  of  the  type  consumers  appear  to  find 
most invasive. 

II 
With a First Amendment violation proven, the question