Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 904.0

529US3

Unit: $U60

[09-26-01 12:39:04] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 803 (2000)

829

Thomas, J., concurring

tising a bareheaded dancer as “topless” might be deceptive,
but it would not make her performance obscene.

As I explained in my dissent in Splawn v. California, 431
U. S. 595, 602 (1977), Ginzburg was decided before the Court
extended First Amendment protection to commercial speech,
Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer
Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748 (1976). Justice Scalia’s pro-
posal is thus not only anachronistic, it also overlooks a key
premise upon which our commercial speech cases are based.
The First Amendment assumes that, as a general matter,
“information is not in itself harmful, that people will perceive
their own best interests if only they are well enough in-
formed, and that the best means to that end is to open the
channels of communication rather than to close them.”
Id.,
at 770. The very fact that the programs marketed by Play-
boy are offensive to many viewers provides a justiﬁcation for
protecting, not penalizing, truthful statements about their
content.

Justice Thomas, concurring.

It would seem to me that, with respect to at least some of
the cable programming affected by § 505 of the Telecommuni-
cations Act of 1996, the Government has ample constitutional
and statutory authority to prohibit its broadcast entirely. A
governmental restriction on the distribution of obscene
materials receives no First Amendment scrutiny. Roth v.
United States, 354 U. S. 476, 485 (1957). Though perhaps
not all of the programming at issue in the case is obscene as
this Court deﬁned the term in Miller v. California, 413 U. S.
15, 24 (1973), one could fairly conclude that, under the stand-
ards applicable in many communities, some of the program-
If this is so, the Government
ming meets the Miller test.
is empowered by statute to sanction these broadcasts with
criminal penalties. See 47 U. S. C. § 559 (1994 ed., Supp. III)
(“Whoever transmits over any cable system any matter
which is obscene or otherwise unprotected by the Constitu-