Opinion ID: 627152
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Subsequent Elaboration: The Turner Cases and Discovery Network

Text: We are conscious, of course, that First Amendment doctrine has not been stagnant in the nearly thirty years since League of Women Voters was decided. We must also consider further elaborations of the narrow tailoring inquiry under intermediate scrutiny. We thus take guidance in particular from two cases together known as the Turner cases, as well from select commercial speech cases that applied intermediate scrutiny, especially Cincinnati v. Discovery Network, 507 U.S. 410, 113 S.Ct. 1505, 123 L.Ed.2d 99 (1993). In the mid-1990s, the Supreme Court had occasion comprehensively to describe intermediate broadcast scrutiny, albeit in a slightly different context from that here, in a pair of cases known as the Turner cases. In Turner Broadcasting System v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 114 S.Ct. 2445, 129 L.Ed.2d 497 (1994) ( Turner I ), the Supreme Court reversed, for further factfinding, the district court's grant of summary judgment to the FCC on a First Amendment challenge to a statute which compelled cable companies to carry local broadcast stations. 512 U.S. at 667, 114 S.Ct. 2445. The Court held that there was not enough evidence in the record to determine whether local broadcast stations would go out of business if cable companies were not required by law to carry local broadcast stations. Id. at 668, 114 S.Ct. 2445. The Court revisited the dispute after additional discovery in district court in Turner Broadcasting System v. FCC, 520 U.S. 180, 117 S.Ct. 1174, 137 L.Ed.2d 369 (1997) ( Turner II ). In Turner II, the Court upheld the district court's decision on remand in favor of the FCC because the additional record evidence supported Congress's determinations. Id. at 224, 117 S.Ct. 1174. As relevant here, the guiding principle of narrow tailoring under intermediate scrutiny is that the government must demonstrate that the recited harms to the substantial governmental interest are real, not merely conjectural, and that the regulation will in fact alleviate those harms in a direct and material way. Turner I, 512 U.S. at 664-65, 114 S.Ct. 2445. Furthermore, although a statute is not invalid simply because there is some imaginable alternative that might be less burdensome on speech, Turner II, 520 U.S. at 217, 117 S.Ct. 1174, the government must prove that the statute does not burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further the government's legitimate interests. Turner I, 512 U.S. at 665, 114 S.Ct. 2445 (internal quotations omitted). Importantly, the government must prove both the reality of the recited harms and that the statute does not burden more speech than necessary by substantial evidence. Turner II, 520 U.S. at 211, 117 S.Ct. 1174. Substantial evidence must include substantial evidence in the record before Congress at the time of the statute's enaction. [7] Id. Additional instruction on what narrow tailoring requires comes from Cincinnati v. Discovery Network, 507 U.S. 410, 113 S.Ct. 1505, 123 L.Ed.2d 99 (1993). In Discovery Network, the Court was faced with a content-based restriction on speech: a city ordinance banned sidewalk newsracks which distributed commercial handbills, but not newsracks which distributed newspapers. Id. at 429, 113 S.Ct. 1505. A group of publishers of commercial handbills challenged the statute as an impermissible content-based restriction on speech prohibited by the First Amendment. Id. at 412, 113 S.Ct. 1505. The city defended the ordinance by contending it furthered its legitimate interest in ensuring safe streets and regulating visual blight. Id. at 415, 113 S.Ct. 1505. Cincinnati contended newsracks in general undermined safety and esthetics in the public right of way; thus, the ban on newsracks which contained a certain type of content was justified because it necessarily reduced the total number of newsracks on sidewalks. Id. at 415, 113 S.Ct. 1505. The Supreme Court held the statute unconstitutional, because the selective and categorical content-based ban on newsracks containing handbills was not narrowly tailored to the city's purported interest. Id. at 417, 113 S.Ct. 1505. Although the city's desire to limit the total number of newsracks is justified by its interests in safety and esthetics, the statute was unrelated to any distinction between `commercial handbills' and `newspapers,' and thus was not narrowly tailored. Id. at 429-30, 113 S.Ct. 1505 (emphasis added, some internal quotation marks omitted). The Court said: The city has asserted an interest in esthetics, but respondent publishers' newsracks are no greater an eyesore than the newsracks permitted to remain on Cincinnati's sidewalks. Each newsrack, whether containing newspapers or commercial handbills, is equally unattractive.... [T]he city's primary concern, as argued to us, is with the aggregate number of newsracks on the streets. On that score, however, all newsracks, regardless whether they contain commercial or noncommercial publications, are equally at fault. Id. at 425-26, 113 S.Ct. 1505. Thus, the Court held the newsrack ordinance was not narrowly tailored, because there was no proof that newsracks containing handbills (banned) threatened the governmental interests in esthetics and safety to a greater degree than news-racks containing newspapers (permitted). Therefore, the Court held the costs and benefits of the statute had not been carefully calculated to meet the substantial governmental interest. See id. at 416 n. 12, 113 S.Ct. 1505. Notably, the ordinance did not regulate the number of newsracks permitted on the city's sidewalks, regardless their content. [8]