Opinion ID: 4542852
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the role of IMDb.com in facilitating age

Text: discrimination; and (3) the extent to which AB 1687 protects professionals in the entertainment industry, including professionals who are not famous performers whose ages or birthdates may be the subject of legitimate discussion. IMDB.COM V. SAG-AFTRA 29 Similarly, the State asserts it would have used discovery to identify information that would refute the district court’s conclusions: (1) that “AB 1687 bans only one kind of speaker from disseminating age-related information, leaving all other sources . . . untouched”; and (2) “that defendants have not shown that partially eliminating one source of agerelated information will appreciably diminish the amount of age-related discrimination occurring in the entertainment industry.” However, no information discovered within these categories could unsettle two of our principal conclusions: (1) that AB 1687 is a content-based restriction of speech subject to strict scrutiny and (2) that the State fails to show that AB 1687 is the least restrictive means to accomplish its goal. At bottom, the State’s and SAG’s discovery requests reflect a fundamental misunderstanding about the State’s burden in justifying restrictions on speech. Here, it does not matter that AB 1687 would accomplish what it sets out to do. See Ashcroft v. ACLU, 542 U.S. 656, 666 (2004) (“[T]he test does not begin with the status quo of existing regulations, then ask whether the challenged restriction has some additional ability to achieve [the state’s] legitimate interest. Any restriction on speech could be justified under that analysis.”). An unconstitutional statute that could achieve positive societal results is nonetheless unconstitutional. Cf. Reed, 135 S. Ct. at 2229 (“Innocent motives do not eliminate the danger of censorship presented by a facially content-based statute, as future government officials may one day wield such statutes to suppress disfavored speech.”). We therefore affirm the district court’s discovery rulings. 30 IMDB.COM V. SAG-AFTRA