Court Opinion

ID: 9428000
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:33.103883+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:11.115674
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
concurring in the judgment.
One of the major difficulties in this case is the proper characterization of the Commission’s Policy Statement. I find it impossible to determine on the present record whether the Commission’s ban on all “promotional” advertising, in contrast to “institutional and informational” advertising, see ante, at 559, is intended to encompass more than “commercial speech.” I am inclined to think that Mr. Justice Stevens is correct that the Commission’s order prohibits more than mere proposals to engage in certain kinds of commercial transactions, and therefore I agree with his conclusion that the ban surely violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. But even on the assumption that the Court is correct that the Commission’s order reaches only commercial speech, I agree with Mr. Justice Blackmun that “[n]o differences between commercial speech and other protected speech justify suppression of commercial speech in order to influence public conduct through manipulation of the availability of information.” Post, at 578.
Accordingly, with the qualifications implicit in the pre*573ceding paragraph, I join the opinions of Mr. Justice Black-mun and Mr. Justice Stevens concurring in the judgment.
Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan joins, concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the Court that the Public Service Commission’s ban on promotional advertising of electricity by public utilities is inconsistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments. I concur only in the Court’s judgment, however, because I believe the test now evolved and applied by the Court is not consistent with our prior cases and does not provide adequate protection for truthful, nonmisleading, non-coercive commercial speech.
The Court asserts, ante, at 566, that “a four-part analysis has developed” from our decisions concerning commercial speech. Under this four-part test a restraint on commercial “communication [that] is neither misleading nor related to unlawful activity” is subject to an intermediate level of scrutiny, and suppression is permitted whenever it “directly advances” a “substantial” governmental interest and is “not more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest.” Ante, at 564 and 566. I agree with the Court that this level of intermediate scrutiny is appropriate for a restraint on commercial speech designed to protect consumers from misleading or coercive speech, or a regulation related to the time, place, or manner of commercial speech. I do not agree, however, that the Court’s four-part test is the proper one to be applied when a State seeks to suppress information about a product in order to manipulate a private economic decision that the State .cannot or has not regulated or outlawed directly.
Since the Court, without citing empirical data or other authority, finds a “direct link” between advertising and energy consumption, it leaves open the possibility that the State may suppress advertising of electricity in order to lessen demand for electricity. I, of course, agree with the Court that, *574in today’s world, energy conservation is a goal of paramount national and local importance. I disagree with the Court, however, when it says that suppression of speech may be a permissible means to achieve that goal. Mr. Justice Stevens appropriately notes: “The justification for the regulation is nothing more than the expressed fear that the audience may find the utility’s message persuasive. Without the aid of any coercion, deception, or misinformation, truthful communication may persuade some citizens to consume more electricity than they otherwise would.” Post, at 581.
The Court recognizes that we have never held that commercial speech may be suppressed in order to further the State’s interest in discouraging purchases of the underlying product that is advertised. Ante, at 566, n. 9. Permissible restraints on commercial speech have been limited to measures designed to protect consumers from fraudulent, misleading, or coercive sales techniques.1 Those designed to deprive consumers of information about products or services that are legally offered for sale consistently have been invalidated.2
I seriously doubt whether suppression of information concerning the availability and price of a legally offered product is ever a permissible way for the State to “dampen” demand for or use of the product. Even though “commercial” speech is involved, such a regulatory measure strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. This is because it is a covert attempt *575by the State to manipulate the choices of its citizens, not by persuasion or direct regulation, but by depriving the public of the information needed to make a free choice. As the Court recognizes, the State’s policy choices are insulated from the visibility and scrutiny that direct regulation would entail and the conduct of citizens is molded by the information that government chooses to give them. Ante, at 566, n. 9 (“We review with special care regulations that entirely suppress commercial speech in order to pursue a nonspeech-related policy. In those circumstances, a ban on speech could screen from public view the underlying governmental policy”). See Rotunda, The Commercial Speech Doctrine in the Supreme Court, 1976 U. Ill. Law Forum 1080, 1080-1083.
If the First Amendment guarantee means anything, it means that, absent clear and present danger, government has no power to restrict expression because of the effect its message is likely to have on the public. See generally Comment, First Amendment Protection for Commercial Advertising: The New Constitutional Doctrine, 44 U. Chi. L. Rev. 205, 243-251 (1976). Our cases indicate that this guarantee applies even to commercial speech. In Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Consumer Council, 425 U. S. 748 (1976), we held that Virginia could not pursue its goal of encouraging the public to patronize the “professional pharmacist” (one who provided individual attention and a stable pharmacist-customer relationship) by “keeping the public in ignorance of the entirely lawful terms that competing pharmacists are offering.” Id., at 770. We noted that our decision left the State free to pursue its goal of maintaining high standards among its pharmacists by “requiring] whatever professional standards it wishes of its pharmacists.” Ibid.
We went on in Virginia Pharmacy Board to discuss the types of regulation of commercial speech that, due to the “commonsense differences” between this form of speech and other forms, are or may be constitutionally permissible. We indicated that government may impose reasonable “time, *576place, and manner” restrictions, and that it can deal with false, deceptive, and misleading commercial speech. We noted that the question of advertising of illegal transactions and the special problems of the electronic broadcast media were not presented.
Concluding with a restatement of the type of restraint that is not permitted, we said: “What is at issue is whether a State may completely suppress the dissemination of con-cededly truthful information about entirely lawful activity, fearful of that information’s effect upon its disseminators and its recipients. . . . [W]e conclude that the answer to this [question] is in the negative.” Id., at 773.
Virginia Pharmacy Board did not analyze the State’s interests to determine whether they were “substantial.” Obviously, preventing professional dereliction and low quality health care are “substantial,” legitimate, and important state goals. Nor did the opinion analyze the ban on speech to determine whether it “directly advance [d],” ante, at 566, 569, these goals. We also did not inquire whether a “more limited regulation of . . . commercial expression,” ante, at 570, would adequately serve the State’s interests. Rather, we held that the State “may not [pursue its goals] by keeping the public in ignorance.” 425 U. S., at 770. (Emphasis supplied.)
Until today, this principle has governed. In Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Willingboro, 431 U. S. 85 (1977), we considered whether a town could ban “For Sale” signs on residential property to further its goal of promoting stable, racially integrated housing. We did note that the record did not establish that the ordinance was necessary to enable the State to achieve its goal. The holding of Linmark, however, was much broader.3 We stated:
“The constitutional defect in this ordinance, however, *577is far more basic. The Township Council here, like the Virginia Assembly in Virginia Pharmacy Bd., acted to prevent its residents from obtaining certain information . . . which pertains to sales activity in Willing-boro. . . . The Council has sought to restrict the free flow of these data because it fears that otherwise homeowners will make decisions inimical to what the Council views as the homeowners’ self-interest and the corporate interest of the township: they will choose to leave town. The Council’s concern, then, was not with any commercial aspect of “For Sale” signs — with offerors communicating offers to offerees — but with the substance of the information communicated to Willingboro citizens.” Id., at 96.
The Court in Linmark resolved beyond all doubt that a strict standard of review applies to suppression of commercial information, where the purpose of the restaint is to influence behavior by depriving citizens of information. The Court followed the strong statement above with an explicit adoption of the standard advocated by Mr. Justice Brandéis in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 377 (1927): “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression.” 431 U. S., at 97.
Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U. S. 678, 700-702 (1977), also applied to content-based restraints on commercial speech the same standard of review we have applied to other varieties of speech. There the Court held that a ban on advertising of contraceptives could not be justified *578by the State’s interest in avoiding “ 'legitimation’ of illicit sexual behavior” because the advertisements could not be characterized as “ 'directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and . . . likely to incite or produce such action,’ ” id., at 701, quoting Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U. S. 444, 447 (1969).
Our prior references to the “ 'commonsense differences’ ” between commercial speech and other speech " 'suggest that a different degree of protection is necessary to insure that the flow of truthful and legitimate commercial information is unimpaired.’ ” Limnark Associates, 431 U. S., at 98, quoting Virginia Pharmacy Board, 425 U. S., at 771-772, n. 24. We have not suggested that the “commonsense differences” between commercial speech and other speech justify relaxed scrutiny of restraints that suppress • truthful, nondeceptive, noneoercive commercial speech. The differences articulated by the Court, see ante, at 564, n. 6, justify a more permissive approach to regulation of the manner of commercial speech for the purpose of protecting consumers from deception or coercion, and these differences explain why doctrines designed to prevent “chilling” of protected speech are inapplicable to commercial speech. No differences between commercial speech and other protected speech justify suppression of commercial speech in order to influence public conduct through manipulation of the availability of information. The Court stated in Carey v. Population Services International:
“Appellants suggest no distinction between commercial and noncommercial speech that would render these discredited arguments meritorious when offered to justify prohibitions on commercial speech. On the contrary, such arguments are clearly directed not at any commercial aspect of the prohibited advertising but at the ideas conveyed and form of expression — the core of First Amendment values.” 431 U. S., at 701, n. 28 (emphasis added).
*579It appears that the Court would permit the State to ban all direct advertising of air conditioning, assuming that a more limited restriction on such advertising would not effectively deter the public from cooling its homes.. In my view, our cases do not support this type of suppression. If a governmental unit believes that use or overuse of air conditioning is a serious problem, it must attack that problem directly, by prohibiting air conditioning or regulating thermostat levels. Just as the Commonwealth of Virginia may promote professionalism of pharmacists directly, so too New York may not promote energy conservation “by keeping the public in ignorance.” Virginia Pharmacy Board, 425 U. S., at 770.

 See Friedman v. Rogers, 440 U. S. 1, 10 (1979) (Court upheld a ban on practice of optometry under a trade name as a permissible requirement that commercial information “ 'appear in such a form ... as [is] necessary to prevent its being deceptive,'” quoting from Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Consumer Council, 425 U. S. 748, 772, n. 24 (1976)); Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S. 447 (1978).

 See Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U. S. 350 (1977); Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U. S. 678, 700-702 (1977); Linmark Associates, Inc. v. WUlingboro, 431 U. S. 85 (1977); Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Consumer Council, 425 U. S. 748 (1976); Bigelow v. Virginia, 421 U. S. 809 (1975).

 In my view, the Court today misconstrues the holdings of both Virginia Pharmacy Board and Linmark Associates by implying that those decisions were based on the fact that the restraints were not closely enough *577related to the governmental interests asserted. See ante, at 564-565, and n. 7. Although the Court noted the lack of substantial relationship between the restraint and the governmental interest in each of those cases, the holding of each clearly rested on a much broader principle.