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Page Number: 497.0

336  CITIZENS  UNITED  v.  FEDERAL  ELECTION  COMM’N 

Opinion of the Court 

Virginia v.  Hicks, 539 U. S. 113, 119 (2003) (citation omitted). 
Consequently,  “the  censor’s  determination  may  in  practice 
be ﬁnal.”  Freedman, supra, at 58. 

This  is  precisely  what  WRTL  sought  to  avoid.  WRTL 
said  that  First  Amendment  standards  “must  eschew  ‘the 
open-ended  rough-and-tumble  of  factors,’  which  ‘invit[es] 
complex argument in  a trial court and  a virtually inevitable 
appeal.’ ”  551 U. S., at 469 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.) (quot­
ing Jerome  B.  Grubart,  Inc.  v.  Great  Lakes  Dredge  &  Dock 
Co.,  513  U. S.  527,  547  (1995);  alteration  in  original).  Yet, 
the  FEC  has  created  a  regime  that  allows  it  to  select  what 
political  speech  is  safe  for  public  consumption  by  applying 
ambiguous tests.  If parties want to avoid litigation and the 
possibility  of  civil  and  criminal  penalties,  they  must  either 
refrain  from  speaking  or  ask  the  FEC  to  issue  an  advisory 
opinion  approving  of  the  political  speech  in  question.  Gov­
ernment  ofﬁcials  pore  over  each  word  of  a  text  to  see  if,  in 
their  judgment,  it  accords  with  the  11-factor  test  they  have 
promulgated.  This  is  an  unprecedented  governmental  in­
tervention into the realm of speech. 

The ongoing chill upon speech that is beyond all doubt pro­
tected  makes  it  necessary  in  this  case  to  invoke  the  earlier 
precedents  that  a  statute  which  chills  speech  can  and  must 
be  invalidated  where  its  facial  invalidity  has  been  demon­
strated.  See  WRTL,  supra,  at  482–483  (Alito,  J.,  concur­
ring); Thornhill v.  Alabama, 310 U. S. 88, 97–98 (1940).  For 
these reasons we ﬁnd it necessary to reconsider Austin. 

III 

The First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make 
no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.”  Laws enacted 
to control or suppress speech may operate at different points 
in  the  speech  process.  The  following  are  just  a  few  exam­
ples  of  restrictions  that  have  been  attempted  at  different 
stages  of  the  speech  process—all  laws  found  to  be  invalid: 
restrictions  requiring  a  permit  at  the  outset,  Watchtower