Opinion ID: 2444614
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The First Amendment and Commercial Speech

Text: The notion that commercial speech is not protected by the First Amendment was first articulated in Valentine v. Chrestensen, 316 U.S. 52, 62 S.Ct. 920, 86 L.Ed.2d 1262 (1942), in an opinion later characterized by Justice Douglas as casual, almost off hand Cammarano v. United States, 358 U.S. 498, 514, 79 S.Ct. 524, 534, 3 L.Ed.2d 462, 472 (1959), (Douglas, J., concurring), and classified as distinctly a limited decision in Bigelow v. Virginia, 421 U.S. 809, 819, 95 S.Ct. 2222, 2231, 44 L.Ed.2d 600, 610 (1975). Bigelow virtually obliterated the notion of unprotected commercial speech. Virginia Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizen's Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 759, 96 S.Ct. 1817, 1824, 48 L.Ed.2d 346, 357 (1976). Specifically leaving open the question of the extent to which constitutional protection is afforded commercial advertising under all circumstances and in the face of all kinds of regulation, 421 U.S. at 826, 95 S.Ct.at 2235, the Court held that commercial [speech] enjoys a degree of First Amendment protection. 421 U.S. at 821, 95 S.Ct. at 2232. The Court suggested a balancing test: Advertising, like all public expression, may be subject to reasonable regulation that serves a legitimate public interest. (citation omitted) To the extent that the commercial activity is subject to regulation, the relationship of speech to that activity may be one factor, among others, to be considered in weighing the First Amendment interest against the governmental interest alleged. Advertising is not thereby stripped of all First Amendment protection. The relationship of speech to the marketplace of products or of services does not make it valueless in the marketplace of ideas.       Regardless of the particular label asserted by the State  whether it calls speech commercial or commercial advertising or solicitation  a court may not escape the task of assessing the First Amendment interest at stake and weighing it against the public interest allegedly served by the regulation. 421 U.S. at 826, 95 S.Ct. at 2235 Needless to say this weighing process was lacking in specifics and required much in the way of clarification. Further articulation came within a year when the Supreme Court announced its decision in Virginia Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 96 S.Ct. 1817, 48 L.Ed. 346 (1976). [2] Recognizing that Bigelow had left undecided the extent to which commercial speech may be regulated and prohibited, the Court said that [h]ere, in contrast, the question whether there is a First Amendment exception [to] `commercial speech' is squarely before us. 425 U.S. at 760, 96 S.Ct. at 1825. Further the Court said: Our question is whether speech which does no more than propose a commercial transaction, (citation omitted) is so removed from any exposition of ideas, (citation omitted) and from `truth, science, morality, and arts in general, in its diffusion of liberal sentiments on the administration of Government,' (citation omitted) that it lacks all protection. Our answer is that it does not. 425 U.S. at 762, 96 S.Ct. at 1825 The stage having been set, the Court held that the free flow of commercial information is indispensable to the public interest. 425 U.S. at 765, 96 S.Ct. at 1827. It did not, however, define commercial speech, and the standard against which its curtailment may be measured remains somewhat nebulous. The Court framed the test of the validity of regulation in these words: In concluding that commercial speech, like other varieties, is protected, we of course do not hold that it can never be regulated in any way. Some forms of commercial speech regulation are surely permissible. We mention a few only to make clear that they are not before us and therefore are not foreclosed by this case. There is no claim, for example, that the prohibition on prescription drug price advertising is a mere time, place, and manner restriction. We have often approved restrictions of that kind provided they are justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech, that they serve a significant governmental interest, and that in so doing they leave open ample alternative channels for communication of the information. (Emphasis supplied) 425 U.S. at 770-71, 96 S.Ct. at 1830 The Court, however, expressly did not delineate the proper bounds of time, place, and manner restrictions. In formulating the above test the Court cited in support of time, place, and manner regulation the case of Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972), wherein the Court, on equal protection grounds, struck down an ordinance which outlawed demonstrations near schools except for peaceful labor picketing. The Court held that the distinction between labor picketing and other peaceful picketing is constitutionally impermissible. Another time, place, and manner decision cited was Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77, 69 S.Ct. 448, 93 L.Ed. 513, 10 ALR 2d 608 (1949), wherein the Court upheld, against an attack on first amendment grounds, an ordinance prohibiting the operation on city streets of vehicles equipped with sound amplifiers which emit loud and raucous noises. For other cases involving time, place, and manner regulations, see Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559, 85 S.Ct. 476, 13 L.Ed.2d 487 (1965); Adderley v. Florida, 385 U.S. 39, 87 S.Ct. 242, 17 L.Ed.2d 149 (1966); Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569, 61 S.Ct. 762, 85 L.Ed. 1049 (1941). The case of Rowan v. United States Post Office, 397 U.S. 728, 90 S.Ct. 1484, 25 L.Ed.2d 736 (1970) has some relevance to the question under consideration. There the Supreme Court upheld a federal statute authorizing a citizen to require that a mailer of pandering advertisements remove his name from its mailing lists and discontinue all future mailings to him. In so holding the Court said: ... it seems to us that a mailer's right to communicate must stop at the mailbox of an unreceptive addressee.       To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass... The ancient concept that a man's home is his castle into which not even the king may enter has lost none of its vitality ... 397 U.S. at 736-37, 90 S.Ct. at 1490 Further, the Court said: We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even good ideas on an unwilling recipient. That we are often captives outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech and other sound does not mean we must be captives everywhere. 397 U.S. at 738, 90 S.Ct. at 1491. We fully realize that a distinguishing characteristic of Rowan is that the ban on the delivery and receipt of objectionable matter is invoked by the citizen as opposed to his government; however, its rationale as to a licensed trespass and the uninvited intrusion upon private premises is apropos the case at bar. A pertinent case cited in Virginia Board of Pharmacy, supra , is Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205, 95 S.Ct. 2268, 45 L.Ed.2d 125 (1975), in which the Court struck down an ordinance prohibiting the display of nude films by a drive-in theater having a screen visible from a public street or place. The basis for the Court's action was that the ordinance discriminates among movies solely on the basis of content. 422 U.S. at 211, 95 S.Ct. at 2273. Quoting from Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 95, 92 S.Ct. 2286, 2290, 33 L.Ed.2d 212, 216 (1972), the Court said: [A]bove all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content. (Emphasis supplied) 422 U.S. at 215, 95 S.Ct. at 2275. A post- Bigelow and Virginia Board of Pharmacy case relevant to the issue under discussion is Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Township of Willingboro, 431 U.S. 85, 97 S.Ct. 1614, 52 L.Ed.2d 155 (1977). The township, concerned with white flight, enacted an ordinance prohibiting the posting of For Sale or Sold signs on real estate. On the basis of its impairment of the flow of truthful and legitimate information, the Court struck down the ordinance. The Court recognized that laws regulating the time, place, or manner of speech stand on a different footing from laws prohibiting speech altogether, but held that this was not such a regulation. In reaching this decision the Court held (1) that alternative channels of communication were far from satisfactory, (2) the ordinance was not genuinely concerned with the place of the speech, (3) it did not act to restrict a mode of communication that `intrudes on the privacy of the home,' and (4) more importantly, it was concerned with the substance of the information.