Opinion ID: 2191418
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: II-A Further Details of the Decision of the Superior Court.

Text: The Superior Court adjudicated originally enacted, and subsequently amended, Sections 1314 and 1321 of the Maine Act unconstitutional as a unwarranted abridgement of protections afforded commercial speech by the First-Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. By cross appeal the plaintiffs contend that the Court was wrong in failing to decide that Section 1313 also abridges constitutionally protected commercial speech. In holding Section 1321 violative of the constitutional protection afforded commercial speech, the Superior Court Justice, without distinguishing among its various subsections, stated: where Section 1321 prohibits the reporting of certain broad categories of information in any circumstances, even with the consent of the consumer involved, the free flow of accurate public record information has been unlawfully restricted. The adjudication is thus unclear. Did the Justice conclude that all the parts of section 1321 that purported to exclude whole categories of information are, as such, direct and unlawful restrictions of protected commercial speech even if the category of information excluded does not pertain to public record information; or did he decide, rather, that the entire Section 1321 scheme intrudes too extensively upon constitutionally protected speech by prohibiting the communication even of information contained in public records? We interpret the Justice's decision as follows. It invalidated Section 1321(1), the portion of Section 1321(2) pertaining to irrelevant information, the portion of Section 1321(3) directed toward expungement of irrelevant information, and Section 1321(4)(A). The ground of invalidation was that those provisions impose unwarranted direct restrictions upon constitutionally protected commercial speech.