Court Opinion

ID: 9430345
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:32.854962+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:24.139884
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
with whom Justice White and Justice Stevens join as to Part I, dissenting.
The plurality concludes that a state-created, limited right of access to the extra space in a utility’s billing envelopes unconstitutionally burdens the utility’s right to speak if the utility has used the space itself to express political views to its customers. This is so even though the extra envelope space belongs to the customers as a matter of state property law. The plurality justifies its conclusion on grounds that the right of access may (1) deter the utility from saying things that might trigger an adverse response, or (2) induce it to respond to subjects about which it might prefer to remain silent, in violation of the principles established in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U. S. 241 (1974), and Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705 (1977). I do not believe that the right of access here will have any noticeable deterrent effect. Nor do I believe that negative free speech rights, applicable to individuals and perhaps the print media, should be extended to corporations generally. I believe that the right of access here is constitutionally indistinguishable from the right of access approved in PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U. S. 74 (1980), and therefore I dissent.1
*27I — I
This Court established in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765 (1978), that the First Amendment prohibits the government from directly suppressing the affirmative speech of corporations. A newspaper publishing corporation’s right to express itself freely is also implicated by governmental action that penalizes speech, see Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, supra, because the deterrent effect of a penalty is very much like direct suppression. Our cases cannot be squared, however, with the view that the First Amendment prohibits governmental action that only indirectly and remotely affects a speaker’s contribution to the overall mix of information available to society.
Several cases illustrate this point. In Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976) (per curiam), the Court upheld limits on political campaign contributions despite the argument that their likely effect would be “to mute the voices of affluent persons and groups in the election process and thereby to equalize the relative ability of all citizens to affect the outcome of elections.” Id., at 25-26. The Court explained that the potential effect on affluent speech of limiting access to this one forum was constitutionally insignificant because of the availability of other forums, id., at 26, n. 26, and that the limitation protected the integrity of our representative democracy by limiting political quid pro quos and the appearance of corruption, id., at 26-27. The Court also upheld a provision granting different levels of subsidies for Presidential campaigns depending upon whether the party receiving the subsidy is a major, minor, or new party. Id., at 87-88. The Court reasoned that the effect of the provision was “not *28to abridge, restrict, or censor speech, but rather to use public money to facilitate and enlarge public discussion.” Id., at 92-93. Similarly, in Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Washington, 461 U. S. 540 (1983), the Court upheld a governmental decision to grant a subsidy to certain expressive groups yet deny it to others, depending on whether the groups served the statutory definition of public interest, even though this had the undeniable effect of enhancing the speech of some groups over the speech of others. The Court explained that Congress is free to subsidize some but not all speech. Id., at 548.
PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, supra, illustrates the point in a case that is very similar to the one decided today. The State of California interpreted its own Constitution to afford a right of access to private shopping centers for the reasonable exercise of speech and petitioning. Id., at 78. While acknowledging that the First Amendment does not itself grant a right of access to private forums, id., at 80-81, the Court upheld the state-created right against a First Amendment challenge. See id., at 85-88. It reasoned that Wooley v. Maynard, supra, does not prohibit such a right of access because the views of those taking advantage of the right would not likely be identified with those of the owners, the State was not dictating any specific message, and the owners were free to disavow any connection to the message by posting disclaimers. 447 U. S., at 87. The Court similarly distinguished West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943), stating that the right of access did not compel the owners to affirm their belief in government orthodoxy, and left them free to publicly dissociate themselves from the views of the speakers. 447 U. S., at 87-88. Finally, it distinguished Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, supra, on the ground that the right of access did not constitute a content-based penalty that would “ ‘dampe[n] the vigor and limi[t] the variety of public debate.’” 447 U. S., at 88, quoting Tornillo, supra, at 257.
*29Of course, the First Amendment does prohibit governmental action affecting the mix of information available to the public if the effect of the action approximates that of direct content-based suppression of speech. Thus, while the Court in Buckley v. Valeo, supra, upheld limits on campaign contributions and allowed disparate governmental subsidies to various political parties, it struck down limitations on campaign expenditures because such limits “impose far greater restraints on the freedom of speech and association.” Id., at 44.2 The Court reasoned that the Government’s.interest in equalizing the relative influence of individuals over election outcomes could not overcome the First Amendment, which was designed to encourage the widest dissemination of diverse views. Id., at 44-45. Similarly, the Court suggested in Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Washington, supra, that governmental subsidies aimed at the suppression of dangerous ideas might not pass constitutional muster. Id., at 550.
Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U. S. 241 (1974), held that a govemmentally imposed “penalty” for the exercise of protected speech is sufficiently like direct suppression to trigger heightened First Amendment scrutiny. The Court in Tomillo struck down a statute granting political candidates a right to reply any time a private newspaper *30criticized them. See id., at 244. The Court reasoned that the statute violated the First Amendment because it “exact[ed] a penalty on the basis of the content of a newspaper,” id., at 256, that would likely have the effect of “ ‘dampe[ning] the vigor and limiting] the variety of public debate.’” Id., at 257, quoting New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 279 (1964).
Although the plurality draws its deterrence rationale from Tomillo, it does not even attempt to characterize the right of access as a “penalty”; indeed, such a Procrustean effort would be doomed to failure. Instead, the plurality stretches Tornillo to stand for the general proposition that the First Amendment prohibits any regulation that deters a corporation from engaging in some expressive behavior. But the deterrent effect of any statute is an empirical question of degree. When the potential deterrent effect of a particular state law is remote and speculative, the law simply is not subject to heightened First Amendment scrutiny. See supra, at 27-29, and n. 2. The plurality does not adequately explain how the potential deterrent effect of the right of access here is sufficiently immediate and direct to warrant strict scrutiny. While a statutory penalty, like the right-of-reply statute in Tornillo, may sufficiently deter speech to trigger such heightened First Amendment scrutiny, the right of access here will not have such an effect on PG&E’s incentives to speak.
The record does not support the inference that PUC issued its order to penalize PG&E because of the content of its inserts or because PG&E included the inserts in its billing envelopes in the first place. The order does not prevent PG&E from using the billing envelopes in the future to distribute inserts whenever it wishes. Nor does its vitality depend on whether PG&E includes inserts in any future billing envelopes. Moreover, the central reason for the access order — to provide for an effective ratepayer voice — would not vary in importance if PG&E had never distributed the inserts or *31ceased distributing them tomorrow. The most that can be said about the connection between the inserts and the order is that the existence of the inserts quite probably brought to TURN’S attention the possibility of requesting access.
Nor does the access order create any cognizable risk of deterring PG&E from expressing its views in the most candid fashion. Unlike the reply statute in Tornillo, which conditioned access upon discrete instances of certain expression, the right of access here bears no relationship to PG&E’s future conduct. PG&E cannot prevent the access by remaining silent or avoiding discussion of controversial subjects. The plurality suggests, however, that the possibility of minimizing the undesirable content of TURN’S speech may induce PG&E to adopt a strategy of avoiding certain topics in hopes that TURN will not think to address them on its own. But this is an extremely implausible prediction. The success of such a strategy would depend on any group given access being little more than a reactive organization. TURN or any other group eventually given access will likely address the controversial subjects in spite of PG&E’s silence. I therefore believe that PG&E will have no incentive to adopt the conservative strategy. Accordingly, the right of access should not be held to trigger heightened First Amendment scrutiny on the ground that it somehow might deter PG&E’s right to speak.
II
The plurality argues, however, that the right of access also implicates PG&E’s right not to speak or to associate with the speech of others, thereby triggering heightened scrutiny. The thrust of the plurality’s argument is that if TURN has access to the envelopes, its speech will have the effect oí forcing PG&E to address topics about which it would prefer to remain silent. The plausibility of any such prediction depends upon the perceived ineffectiveness of a disclaimer or the absence of any effective alternative means for consumer groups like TURN to communicate to the ratepayers. In *32PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U. S. 74 (1980), this Court held that the availability of an effective disclaimer was sufficient to eliminate any infringement upon negative free speech rights. Id., at 87-88. If an alternative forum of communication exists, TURN or the other consumer groups will be able to induce PG&E to address the additional topics anyway. Finally, because PG&E retains complete editorial freedom over the content of its inserts, the effect of the right of access is likely to be qualitatively different from a direct prescription by the government of “what shall be orthodox in . . . matters of opinion.” West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S., at 642.
There is, however, a more fundamental flaw in the plurality’s analysis. This Court has recognized that natural persons enjoy negative free speech rights because of their interest in self-expression; an individual’s right not to speak or to associate with the speech of others is a component of the broader constitutional interest of natural persons in freedom of conscience. Thus, in Barnette, supra, this Court struck down a compulsory flag salute statute to protect “the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control.” Id., at 642. Similarly, in Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705 (1977), the Court invalidated a statute requiring an official slogan to be displayed on all license plates to protect the individual interest in “freedom of mind.” Id., at 714. See also Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U. S. 209, 234-235 (1977). Most recently, in Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U. S. 524 (1985), this Court rejected a public figure exception to the copyright law, reasoning that the protection of an author’s profit incentive furthers rather than inhibits expression, id., at 555-559, and that an author has a countervailing First Amendment interest in “freedom of thought and expression [that] ‘includes both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from *33speaking at all.’” Id., at 559 (emphasis added), quoting Wooley v. Maynard, supra, at 714.
In Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U. S. 241 (1974), the Court extended negative free speech rights to newspapers without much discussion. The Court stated that the right-of-reply statute not only deterred affirmative speech, but also “fail[ed] to clear the barriers of the First Amendment because of its intrusion into the function of editors.” Id., at 258. The Court explained that interference with “the exercise of editorial control and judgment” creates a peril for the liberty of the press like government control over “‘what is to go into a newspaper.’” Ibid., and n. 24, quoting 2 Z. Chafee, Government and Mass Communications 633 (1947). The Court did not elaborate further on the justification for its holding.
Extension of the individual freedom of conscience decisions to business corporations strains the rationale of those cases beyond the breaking point. To ascribe to such artificial entities an “intellect” or “mind” for freedom of conscience purposes is to confuse metaphor with reality. Corporations generally have not played the historic role of newspapers as conveyers of individual ideas and opinion. In extending positive free speech rights to corporations, this Court drew a distinction between the First Amendment rights of corporations and those of natural persons. See First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S., at 776; Consolidated Edison Co. v. Public Service Comm’n of N. Y., 447 U. S. 530, 534-535, and n. 2 (1980). It recognized that corporate free speech rights do not arise because corporations, like individuals, have any interest in self-expression. See Bellotti, supra, at 777, and n. 12; Consolidated Edison, supra, at 534, n. 2. It held instead that such rights are recognized as an instrumental means of furthering the First Amendment purpose of fostering a broad forum of information to facilitate self-government. See Bellotti, supra, at 783; Consolidated Edison, supra, at 533.
*34The interest in remaining isolated from the expressive activity of others, and in declining to communicate at all, is for the most part divorced from this “broad public forum” purpose of the First Amendment. The right of access here constitutes an effort to facilitate and enlarge public discussion; it therefore furthers rather than abridges First Amendment values. See Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, supra, at 558; Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S., at 92-93. In Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, 471 U. S. 626 (1985), this Court held that “[b]ecause the extension of First Amendment protection to commercial speech is justified principally by the value to consumers of the information such speech provides, . . . [the] constitutionally protected interest in not providing any particular factual information in [a business’] advertising is minimal.” Id., at 651 (citation omitted). Likewise, because the interest on which the constitutional protection of corporate speech rests is the societal interest in receiving information and ideas, the constitutional interest of a corporation in not permitting the presentation of other distinct views clearly identified as those of the speaker is de minimis. This is especially true in the case of PG&E, which is after all a regulated public utility, Any claim it may have had to a sphere of corporate autonomy was largely surrendered to extensive regulatory authority when it was granted legal monopoly status.
This argument is bolstered by the fact that the two constitutional liberties most closely analogous to the right to refrain from speaking — the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and the constitutional right of privacy — have been denied to corporations based on their corporate status. The Court in Bellotti recognized that some “‘purely personal’ guarantees . . . are unavailable to corporations and other organizations,” 435 U. S., at 779, n. 14, and therefore declined to hold that “corporations have the full measure of *35rights that individuals enjoy under the First Amendment.” Id., at 777.3
III
PG&E is not an individual or a newspaper publisher; it is a regulated utility. The insistence on treating identically for constitutional purposes entities that are demonstrably different is as great a jurisprudential sin as treating differently those entities which are the same. Because I think this case is governed by PruneYard, and not by Tornillo or Wooley, I would affirm the judgment of the Supreme Court of California.

 This ease does not involve the question whether the First Amendment provides a right of access to a private forum. See Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 *27U. S. 507 (1976); Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U. S. 501 (1946). The right of access in this case was granted by state law. See PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U. S. 74 (1980); Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U. S. 241 (1974); cf. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U. S. 94 (1973); Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U. S. 367 (1969).

 This was the critical distinction between the contribution and expenditure limitations, and not the relative worth of the respective governmental interests. The Court in Buckley v. Valeo never suggested that the interest served by the campaign limitation provision was a “compelling” one, nor examined the provision to determine whether it was sufficiently tailored to the interest to survive “heightened scrutiny.” The Court was satisfied that the provision had only an indirect and minimal effect on First Amendment interests, as well as a rational basis. Nor did the Court treat the expenditure limitations differently because the governmental justification was less important. Instead, the relatively greater effect of these limitations on affirmative speech triggered heightened scrutiny, and a rational basis was no longer sufficient to justify them. See Buckley, 424 U. S., at 44-45.

 The extension of negative free speech rights to corporations would cast doubt upon the result in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U. S. 367 (1969), as well as the suggestion in Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S. 507 (1976), that the Federal Government may grant employees a right of access to employer property for the purpose of picketing, even though the First Amendment does not guarantee such access. Id., at 521-523.