Opinion ID: 627152
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Requirements of Intermediate Scrutiny

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.
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]