Opinion ID: 627152
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: League of Women Voters

Text: In determining what the application of intermediate scrutiny entails, League of Women Voters is our starting point. In that case, the Supreme Court considered a First Amendment challenge to a statute which forbade any public broadcasting station from transmitting editorials on controversial issues of public importance if that station had received a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Court in League of Women Voters held that the ban on station editorials was defined solely on the basis of the content of the suppressed speech. Id. at 383, 104 S.Ct. 3106. In order to determine whether a particular statement by station management constitutes an `editorial,' the Court reasoned, enforcement authorities must necessarily examine the content of the message that is conveyed to determine whether the views expressed concern `controversial issues of public importance.' Id. Although the Court held that the statute at issue in League of Women Voters was viewpoint -neutral  i.e., it prohibited station editorials on all sides of an issue  the Court held the First Amendment's hostility to content-based regulation extends not only to restrictions on particular viewpoints, but also to prohibition of public discussion on an entire topic; thus, the Court held the statute was a content-based restriction on speech. Id. at 384, 104 S.Ct. 3106. In light of the First Amendment's hostility towards content-based restrictions on speech touching on controversial issues of public importance on the one hand, and deference afforded to Congress's regulation of the broadcast spectrum on the other, the Court in League of Women Voters held that a robust form of intermediate scrutiny applies to content-based restrictions on broadcast speech which burden political expression. Under the standard applied in League of Women Voters, a restriction on speech will be upheld only if the government proves the restriction is narrowly tailored to further a substantial governmental interest. Id. at 380, 104 S.Ct. 3106. The Court in League of Women Voters  while declining to require the government to prove a compelling interest under the more stringent strict scrutiny test  required judicial wariness within the standard it described. The Court did so because the statute at issue in that case restricted editorials, which are precisely the form of speech which the Framers of the Bill of Rights were most anxious to protect  speech that is indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth. Id. at 383, 104 S.Ct. 3106. The Court said that it must be particularly wary in assessing [the statute] to determine whether it reflects an impermissible attempt to allow the government to control... the search for political truth. Id. at 384, 104 S.Ct. 3106 (emphasis added). The Court held that the restriction there was not narrowly tailored. Id. at 395, 104 S.Ct. 3106. Rather, a broad ban on all editorializing by every station that receives [Corporation for Public Broadcasting] funds far exceeds what is necessary to protect against the risk of governmental interference or to prevent the public from assuming that editorials by public broadcasting stations represent the official view of government. Id. Although the Court recognized that the Government certainly has a substantial interest in ensuring that the audiences of noncommercial stations will not be led to think that the broadcaster's editorials reflect the official view of the Government, the Court said that this interest can be fully satisfied by less restrictive means that are readily available. Id. For example, the Court stated that Congress could simply require public broadcasting stations to broadcast a disclaimer every time they air editorials which would state that the editorial ... does not in any way represent the views of the Federal Government or any of the station's other sources of funding. Id. Thus, the Court held the ban on station editorials unconstitutional and affirmed the grant of summary judgment to the League of Women Voters. Id. at 402, 104 S.Ct. 3106. For the purposes of application of the proper level of scrutiny, the statute at issue in this case is similar to the challenged statute in League of Women Voters. [6] Section 399b makes content-based distinctions which, by their terms, burden speech in a similar manner to the provision at issue in League of Women Voters. Like the statute in League of Women Voters, § 399b was enacted pursuant to Congress's regulation of public broadcast stations  stations which were explicitly set aside for educational programming. Moreover, subsections 399b(a)(2) and (a)(3) share the additional similarity with the provision at issue in League of Women Voters that the provisions burden public issue and core political speech.