Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-1140_5368.pdf
Page Number: 3

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

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Syllabus 

has applied strict scrutiny to content-based laws regulating the non-
commercial  speech  of  lawyers,  see  Reed,  supra,  at  ___,  professional
fundraisers,  see  Riley,  supra,  at  798,  and  organizations  providing
specialized advice on international law, see Holder v. Humanitarian 
Law  Project,  561  U. S.  1,  27–28.    And  it  has  stressed  the  danger  of 
content-based  regulations  “in  the  fields  of  medicine  and  public
health, where information can save lives.”  Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 
564  U. S.  552,  566.    Such  dangers  are  also  present  in  the  context  of 
professional  speech,  where  content-based  regulation  poses  the  same
“risk that the Government seeks not to advance a legitimate regula-
tory  goal,  but  to  suppress  unpopular  ideas  or  information,”  Turner 
Broadcasting  Systems,  Inc.  v.  FCC,  512  U. S.  622,  641.    When  the 
government  polices  the  content  of  professional  speech,  it  can  fail  to
“ ‘preserve  an  uninhibited  marketplace  of  ideas  in  which  truth  will 
ultimately  prevail.’ ”    McCullen  v.  Coakley,  573  U. S.  ___,  ___–___. 
Professional  speech  is  also  a  difficult  category  to  define  with  preci-
sion.  See  Brown  v.  Entertainment  Merchants  Assn.,  564  U. S.  786, 
791.  If States could choose the protection that speech receives simply
by requiring a license, they would have a powerful tool to impose “in-
vidious  discrimination  of  disfavored  subjects.”    Cincinnati  v.  Discov-
ery Network, Inc., 507 U. S. 410, 423, n. 19.  Pp. 11–14.

(c) Although  neither  California  nor  the  Ninth  Circuit  have  ad-
vanced  a  persuasive  reason  to  apply  different  rules  to  professional
speech,  the  Court  need  not  foreclose  the  possibility  that  some  such
reason  exists  because  the  licensed  notice  cannot  survive  even  inter-
mediate  scrutiny.    Assuming  that  California’s  interest  in  providing
low-income women with information about state-sponsored service is 
substantial,  the  licensed  notice  is  not  sufficiently  drawn  to  promote
it.  The  notice  is  “wildly  underinclusive,”  Entertainment  Merchants 
Assn.,  supra,  at  802,  because  it  applies  only  to  clinics  that  have  a
“primary purpose” of “providing family planning or pregnancy-related 
services” while excluding several other types of clinics that also serve
low-income  women  and  could  educate  them  about  the  State’s  ser-
vices.  California  could  also  inform  the  women  about  its  services 
“without  burdening  a  speaker  with  unwanted  speech,”  Riley,  supra, 
at 800, most obviously through a public-information campaign.  Peti-
tioners  are  thus  likely  to  succeed  on  the  merits  of  their  challenge. 
Pp. 14–17.  

2. The  unlicensed  notice  unduly  burdens  protected  speech.    It  is 
unnecessary to decide whether Zauderer’s standard applies here, for 
even under Zauderer, a disclosure requirement cannot be “unjustified 
or unduly burdensome.”  471 U. S., at 651.  Disclosures must remedy
a  harm  that  is  “potentially  real  not  purely  hypothetical,”  Ibanez  v. 
Florida  Dept.  of  Business  and  Professional  Regulation,  Bd.  of  Ac-