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2  NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA v. VULLO 

JACKSON, J., concurring 

ers, 372 U. S., at 61–62, 66–67.  Even though the state com-
mission  had  not  itself  “seized  or  banned”  any  books,  “the 
threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coer-
cion, persuasion, and intimidation” against the distributors
“directly and designedly stopped the circulation of publica-
tions  in  many  parts  of  Rhode  Island.”    Id.,  at  67–68. 
Essentially,  the  State’s  threats  to  third  parties—the 
distributors—erected  through  private  hands  an  “effective
state regulation . . . of obscenity.”  Id., at 69.  And the gov-
ernment could not escape responsibility for the distributors’ 
actions merely because the commission did not itself seize
any books.  See id., at 66–67. 

Notably,  however,  the  government’s  coercion  of  the  dis-
tributors into doing its bidding was not—in and of itself—
what offended the First Amendment.  Rather, by threaten-
ing those third-party conduits of speech, the state commis-
sion had effectively “subject[ed] the distribution of publica-
tions to a system of prior administrative restraints” lacking 
the requisite constitutional safeguards.  Id., at 70.  Put an-
other way, by exerting pressure on a third party, the State 
had constructed a “system of informal censorship.”  Id., at 
71. 

The lesson of Bantam Books is that “a government official
cannot do indirectly what she is barred from doing directly.” 
Ante, at 11.  That case does not hold that government coer-
cion alone violates the First Amendment.  And recognizing
the  distinction  between  government  coercion  and  a  First
Amendment violation is important because our democracy 
can function only if the government can effectively enforce
the  rules  embodied  in  legislation;  by  its  nature,  such  en-
forcement often involves coercion in the form of legal sanc-
tions.  The existence of an allegation of government coercion
of a third party thus merely invites, rather than answers,
the question whether that coercion indirectly worked a vio-
lation of the plaintiff’s First Amendment rights.