Court Opinion

ID: 8915768
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 04:58:20.606649+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:08:58.104592
License: Public Domain

Judge ADAMS
dissents from the denial of rehearing, and makes the following statement:
Prior to 1975, commercial speech had no sanctuary in the First Amendment. Then in Bigelow v. Virginia, 421 U.S. 809, 95 S.Ct. 2222, 44 L.Ed.2d 600 (1975), the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protected the right of a Virginia newspaper to run advertisements which an*918nouriced that abortions were legal in New York and offered the services of a New York referral agency. The statute in question banned all publications that prompted the procuring of an abortion. The court emphasized the great public interest in the subject matter. A year later, in Virginia State Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 96 S.Ct. 1817, 48 L.Ed.2d 346 (1976), the Court relied on Bigelow to hold that a Virginia statute that, completely barred pharmacists from advertising the sale of prescription drugs was unconstitutional. A primary reason for this result was the Court’s concern that “the poor, the sick, and the aged” might be substantially disadvantaged by this law. The lack of important information regarding needed medication could seriously limit their “enjoyment of basic necessities [of life].” 425 U.S. at 763-64, 96 S.Ct. at 1826-1827.
The Supreme Court’s next decision in this area was Bates v. State Bar, 433 U.S. 350, 97 S.Ct. 2691, 53 L.Ed.2d 810 (1977), which struck down an Arizona Supreme Court rule which completely prohibited any advertising by a lawyer. One of the essential predicates of the Bates decision was that many citizens in Arizona and elsewhere were not obtaining legal assistance even when they needed counsel because of their fears regarding the price of such advice or because of their inability to locate a competent attorney.
In Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar, 436 U.S. 447, 98 S.Ct. 1912, 56 L.Ed.2d 444 (1978), the court ruled that a state may forbid in-person solicitation of prospective clients by lawyers for pecuniary gain, and noted the distinction between commercial and noncommercial speech. Speaking for the Court, Justice Blackmun said:
We have not discarded the “commonsense” distinction between speech proposing a commercial transaction, which occurs in an area traditionally subject to government regulation, and other varieties of speech. Virginia Pharmacy. To require a parity of constitutional protection for commercial and noncommercial speech alike could invite dilution, simply by a leveling process, of the force of the Amendment’s guarantee with respect to the latter kind of speech. Rather than subject the First Amendment to such a devitalization, we instead have afforded commercial speech a limited measure of protection, commensurate with its subordinate position in the scale of First Amendment values, while allowing modes of regulation that might be impermissible in the realm of noncommercial [expression].
In our case, a governmental unit, here a state university, has not barred completely any advertising regarding plaintiff’s products. Nothing prevents the plaintiff from communicating price information by placing signs on the school’s bulletin boards or mailing circulars to the students, or even coming on the premises and presenting their merchandise to the students. The primary restriction seems to be that sales may not be consummated in the common areas of a dormitory. Penn State apparently has attempted to implement this restriction by placing minimal limits on the format of the group demonstration. No one has shown the great need for permitting sales of merchandise to be conducted in this manner.
I have a serious question whether a reasonable reading of Bigelow, Virginia Pharmacy, Bates, and Ohralik can yield a conclusion that a state university is constitutionally limited to a narrow range of options in regulating third parties permitted on school premises to promote sales of merchandise. I believe this matter should be addressed by the entire Court and the subject carefully considered before signals are sent to state universities indicating that they may well lose a significant portion of their control over commercial activity on their campuses.
I am concerned that, unless the courts are prepared to step back and take a careful review of the precedents, the extension of a juridical concept by a dry and remorseless logic can carry us to a position never contemplated by the Supreme Court when this doctrine was first propounded. Moreover, *919it is a position totally incompatible with our societal concerns.7
ALDISERT, JAMES HUNTER, III, WEIS and GARTH, Circuit Judges, join in this statement.

. As the Chief Justice has reminded us: “ ‘All rights tend to declare themselves absolute to their logical extreme. Yet all in fact are limited by the neighborhood of principles of policy which are other than those on which the particular right is founded United States v. 12 200-Ft. Reels of Super 8 Mm. Film, 413 U.S. 123, 93 S.Ct. 2665, 37 L.Ed.2d 500 (1973), quoting Hudson County Water Co. v. McCarter, 209 U.S. 349, 355, 28 S.Ct. 529, 531, 52 L.Ed. 828 (1908) (Holmes, J.).