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Page Number: 29

2 

AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY FOUNDATION v. BONTA 

ALITO, J., concurring
Opinion of ALITO, J. 

plies categorically “to First Amendment challenges to com-
pelled disclosure.”  Ante, at 7 (plurality opinion).  JUSTICE 
THOMAS,  by  contrast,  would  hold  that  strict  scrutiny  ap-
plies in all such cases. See ante, at 1–2 (concurring opinion).
I am not prepared at this time to hold that a single standard 
applies to all disclosure requirements.  And I do not read 
our cases to have broadly resolved the question in favor of
exacting  scrutiny.    This  Court  decided  its  seminal  com-
pelled  disclosure  cases  before  it  developed  modern  strict
scrutiny doctrine.  See Fallon, Strict Judicial Scrutiny, 54
UCLA  L. Rev.  1267,  1284  (2007)  (“Before  1960,  what  we 
would now call strict judicial scrutiny . . . did not exist”); id., 
at 1282 (contending that modern strict scrutiny’s “first un-
ambiguous  appearance”  in  a  majority  opinion  occurred  in
1969).  Accordingly,  nothing  in  those  cases  can  be  under-
stood  as  rejecting  strict  scrutiny.  If  anything,  their  lan-
guage and reasoning—requiring a compelling interest and
a minimally intrusive means of advancing that interest—
anticipated and is fully in accord with contemporary strict
scrutiny  doctrine.  See,  e.g.,  Shelton  v.  Tucker,  364  U. S. 
479, 488 (1960) (the government’s purpose “cannot be pur-
sued by means that broadly stifle fundamental personal lib-
erties  when  the  end  can  be  more  narrowly  achieved”); 
NAACP  v.  Alabama  ex rel.  Patterson,  357  U. S.  449,  463 
(1958)  (requiring  a  “compelling”  interest  (internal  quota-
tion marks omitted)).  Similarly, Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 
1 (1976) (per curiam), and its progeny should not be read to
have broadly cabined our earlier decisions merely by rely-
ing on them in one particular context.

Because the choice between exacting and strict scrutiny
has no effect on the decision in these cases, I see no need to 
decide which standard  should be applied here or whether 
the same level of scrutiny should apply in all cases in which 
the compelled disclosure of associations is challenged under 
the First Amendment.