Court Opinion

ID: 9425056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:13:34.4612+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:53.452472
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
dissenting.
I dissent. The California regulation at issue here clearly applies to some speech protected by the First Amendment, as applied to the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and also, no doubt, to some speech and conduct which are unprotected under our prior decisions. See Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U. S. 413 (1966); Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476 (1957). The State points out, however, that the regulation does not prohibit speech directly, but speaks only to the conditions under which a license to sell liquor by the drink can be granted and retained. But, as Mr. Justice Marshall carefully demonstrates in Part II of his dissenting opinion, by requiring the owner of a nightclub to forgo the exercise of certain rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, the State has imposed an unconstitutional condition on the grant of a license. See Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U. S. 593 (1972); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398 (1963); Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513 (1958). Nothing in the language or history of the Twenty-first Amendment authorizes the .States to use their liquor licensing power as a means for the deliberate inhibition of protected, even if distasteful, forms of expression. For that reason, I would affirm the judgment of the District Court.