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Page Number: 32

2 

MATAL v. TAM 

Opinion of KENNEDY, J. 

I 

Those few categories of speech that the government can 
regulate  or  punish—for  instance,  fraud,  defamation,  or
incitement—are well established within our constitutional 
tradition.  See United States v. Stevens, 559 U. S. 460, 468 
(2010).  Aside  from  these  and  a  few  other  narrow  excep-
tions,  it  is  a  fundamental  principle  of  the  First  Amend-
ment  that  the  government  may  not  punish  or  suppress 
speech  based  on  disapproval  of  the  ideas  or  perspectives
the  speech  conveys.  See  Rosenberger  v.  Rector  and  Visi-
tors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819, 828–829 (1995).

The First Amendment guards against laws “targeted at
specific  subject  matter,”  a  form  of  speech  suppression 
known  as  content  based  discrimination.    Reed  v.  Town  of 
Gilbert,  576  U. S.  ___,  ___  (2015)  (slip  op.,  at  12).    This 
category includes a subtype of laws that go further, aimed 
at  the  suppression  of  “particular  views  . . .  on  a  subject.” 
Rosenberger,  515  U. S.,  at  829.    A  law  found  to  discrimi-
nate  based  on  viewpoint  is  an  “egregious  form  of  content 
discrimination,” which is “presumptively unconstitutional.” 
Id., at 829–830. 

At its most basic, the test for viewpoint discrimination is 
whether—within  the  relevant  subject  category—the  gov-
ernment has singled out a subset of messages for disfavor 
based  on  the  views  expressed.  See  Cornelius  v.  NAACP 
Legal Defense & Ed. Fund, Inc., 473 U. S. 788, 806 (1985) 
(“[T]he government violates the First Amendment when it 
denies  access  to  a  speaker  solely  to  suppress  the  point  of
view he espouses on an otherwise includible subject”).  In 
the  instant  case,  the  disparagement  clause  the  Govern-
ment  now  seeks  to  implement  and  enforce  identifies  the
relevant  subject  as  “persons,  living  or  dead,  institutions, 
beliefs, or national symbols.”  15 U. S. C. §1052(a).  Within 
that  category,  an  applicant  may  register  a  positive  or
benign  mark  but  not  a  derogatory  one.    The  law  thus 
reflects  the  Government’s  disapproval  of  a  subset  of  mes-