Court Opinion

ID: 9423041
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:05:44.577448+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:41.916589
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice Goldberg joins,
concurring.
These might be troublesome cases if the addressees predicated their claim for relief upon the First Amendment rights of the senders. To succeed, the addressees *308would then have to establish their standing to vindicate the senders’ constitutional rights, cf. Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U. S. 479, 486, as well as First Amendment protection for political propaganda prepared and printed abroad by or on behalf of a foreign government, cf. Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U. S. 763, 781-785. However, those questions are not before us, since the addressees assert First Amendment claims in their own right: they contend that the Government is powerless to interfere with the delivery of the material because the First Amendment “necessarily protects the right to receive it.” Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U. S. 141, 143. Since the decisions today uphold this contention, I join the Court’s opinion.
It is true that the First Amendment contains no specific guarantee of access to publications. However, the protection of the Bill of Rights goes beyond the specific guarantees to protect from congressional abridgment those equally fundamental personal rights necessary to make the express guarantees fully meaningful. See, e. g., Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497; NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U. S. 449; Kent v. Dulles, 357 U. S. 116; Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 II. S. 500. I think the right to receive publications is such a fundamental right. The dissemination of ideas can accomplish nothing if otherwise willing addressees are not free to receive and consider them. It would be a barren marketplace of ideas that had only sellers and no buyers.
Even if we were to accept the characterization of this statute as a regulation not intended to control the content of speech, but only incidentally limiting its unfettered exercise, see Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U. S. 1, 16-17, we “have consistently held that only a compelling [governmental] interest in the regulation of a subject within [governmental] constitutional power to regulate can jus*309tify limiting First Amendment freedoms.” NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 438. The Government’s brief expressly disavows any support for this statute “in large public interests such as would be needed to justify a true restriction upon freedom of expression or inquiry.” Rather the Government argues that, since an addressee taking the trouble to return the card can receive the publication named in it, only inconvenience and not an abridgment is involved. But inhibition as well as prohibition against the exercise of precious First Amendment rights is a power denied to government. See, e. g., Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U. S. 51; Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 64; Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513. The registration requirement which was struck down in Thomas v. Collins, 323 U. S. 516, was not appreciably more burdensome. Moreover, the addressee’s failure to return this form results in nondelivery not only of the particular publication but also of all similar publications or material. Thus, although the addressee may be content not to receive the particular publication, and hence does not return the card, the consequence is a denial of access to like publications which he may desire to receive. In any event, we cannot sustain an intrusion on First Amendment rights on the ground that the intrusion is only a minor one. As the Court said in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 635:
“It may be that it is the obnoxious thing in its mildest and least repulsive form; but illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing in that way, namely, by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure. This can only be obviated by adhering to the rule that constitutional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed. A close and literal construction deprives them of half their efficacy, and leads to gradual depreciation of the right, as if it consisted more in sound than in substance. *310It is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon.”
The Government asserts that Congress enacted the statute in the awareness that Communist political propaganda mailed to addressees in the United States on behalf of foreign governments was often offensive to the recipients and constituted a subsidy to the very governments which bar the dissemination of publications from the United States. But the sensibilities of the unwilling recipient are fully safeguarded by 39 CFR § 44.1 (a) (Supp. 1965) under which the Post Office will honor his request to stop delivery; the statute under consideration, on the other hand, impedes delivery even to a willing addressee. In the area of First Amendment freedoms, government has the duty to confine itself to the least intrusive regulations which are adequate for the purpose. Cf. Butler v. Michigan, 352 U. S. 380. The argument that the statute is justified by the object of avoiding the subsidization of propaganda of foreign governments which bar American propaganda needs little comment. If the Government wishes to withdraw a subsidy or a privilege, it must do so by means and on terms which do not endanger First Amendment rights. Cf. Speiser v. Randall, supra. That the governments which originate this propaganda themselves have no equivalent guarantees only highlights the cherished values of our constitutional framework; it can never justify emulating the practice of restrictive regimes in the name of expediency.
MR. Justice Harlan concurs in the judgment of the Court on the grounds set forth in this concurring opinion.