Court Opinion

ID: 9421759
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:59:42.042359+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:31.927950
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
concurring.
Valentine v. Chrestensen, 316 U. S. 52, 54, held that business advertisements and commercial matters* did not enjoy the protection of the First Amendment, made *514applicable to the States by the Fourteenth. The ruling was casual, almost offhand. And it has not survived reflection. That “freedom of speech or of the press,” directly guaranteed against encroachment by the Federal Government and safeguarded against state action by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, is not in terms or by implication confined to discourse of a particular kind and nature. It has often been stressed as essential to the exposition and exchange of political ideas, to the expression of philosophical attitudes, to the flowering of the letters. Important as the First Amendment is to all those cultural ends, it has not been restricted to them. Individual or group protests against action which results in monetary injuries are certainly not beyond the reach of the First Amendment, as Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88, which placed picketing within the-ambit of the First Amendment, teaches. And see Newell v. Local Union, 181 Kan. 898, 182 Kan. 205, 317 P. 2d 817, 319 P. 2d 171, reversed, 356 U. S. 341. A protest against government action that affects a business occupies as high a place. The profit motive should make no difference, for that is an element inherent in the very conception of a press under our system of free enterprise. Those who make their living through exercise of First Amendment rights are no less entitled to its protection than those whose advocacy or promotion is not hitched to a profit motive. We held as much in Follett v. McCormick, 321 U. S. 573. And I find it difficult to draw a line between that group and those who in other lines of endeavor advertise their wares by different means. Chief Justice Hughes speaking for the Court in Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U. S. 444, 452, defined the First Amendment right with which we now deal in the broadest terms, “The press in its historic connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.” And see Jamison v. Texas, 318 U. S. 413, 416; Martin v. Struthers, *515319 U. S. 141, 143; Burstyn v. Wilson, 343 U. S. 495, 501-502.
In spite of the overtones of Valentine v. Chrestensen, supra, I find it impossible to say that the owners of the present business who were fighting for their lives in opposing these initiative measures were not exercising First Amendment rights. If Congress had gone so far as to deny all deductions for “ordinary and necessary business expenses” if a taxpayer spent money to promote or oppose initiative measures, then it would be placing a penalty on the exercise of First Amendment rights. That was in substance what a State did in Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513. “To deny an exemption to claimants who engage in certain forms of speech is in effect to penalize them for such speech.” Id., at 518. Congress, however, has taken no such action here. It has not undertaken to penalize taxpayers for certain types of advocacy; it has merely allowed some, not all, expenses as deductions. Deductions are a matter of grace, not of right. Commissioner v. Sullivan, 356 U. S. 27. To hold that this item of expense must be allowed as a deduction would be to give impetus to the view favored in some quarters that First Amendment rights must be protected by tax exemptions. But that proposition savors of the notion that First Amendment rights are somehow not fully realized unless they are subsidized by the State. Such a notion runs counter to our decisions (Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233, 250; Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105, 112; Follett v. McCormick, supra, at 578), and may indeed conflict with the underlying premise that a complete hands-off policy on the part of government is at times the only course consistent with First Amendment rights. See McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U. S. 203.
With this addendum, I concur in the opinion of the Court.

Two decisions prior to the Valentine case approved broad regulation of commercial advertising. Fifth Avenue Coach Co. v. New York, 221 U. S. 467, was decided long before Stromberg v. California, 283 U. S. 359, extended the application of the First Amendment to the States. In Packer Corp. v. Utah, 285 U. S. 105, the First Amendment problem was not raised. The extent to which such advertising could be regulated consistently with the First Amendment (cf. Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296; Martin v. Struthers, 319 U. S. 141; Breard v. Alexandria, 341 U. S. 622; Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476) has therefore never been authoritatively determined.