Court Opinion

ID: 9431449
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:32:18.971189+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:28.556321
License: Public Domain

Justice Scalia,
concurring in part and concurring in judgment.
We ftave held the solicitation of money by charities to be fully protected as the dissemination of ideas. See ante, at 787-789; Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U. S. 947, 959-961 (1984); Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 444 U. S. 620, 628-632 (1980). It is axiomatic that, although fraudulent misrepresentation of facts can be regulated, cf. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254 (1964), the dissemination of ideas cannot be regulated to .prevent it from being unfair or unreasonable, see, e. g., Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U. S. 46, 51, 54, 57 (1988); Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U. S. 241, 256-258 (1974); Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U. S. 415, 419 (1971); Kingsley International Pictures Corp. v. Regents of University of New York, 360 U. S. 684, 688-689 (1959); Baumgartner v. United States, 322 U. S. 665, 673-674 (1944). Because the opinion of the Court, except for footnote 11, is consistent with this principle, I join all of the opinion with that exception.
As to the last two sentences of that footnote, which depart from the case at hand to make a pronouncement upon a situation that is not before us, I do' not see how requiring the professional solicitor to disclose his professional status is narrowly tailored to prevent fraud. Where core First Amendment speech is at issue, the State can assess liability for specific instances of deliberate deception, but it cannot impose' a prophylactic rule requiring disclosure even where misleading statements are not made. Cf. Landmark Communications, Inc. v. Virginia, 435 U. S. 829, 843-844 (1978). *804Since donors are assuredly aware that a portion of their donations may go to solicitation costs and other administrative expenses — whether the solicitor is a professional, an in-house employee, or even a volunteer — it is not misleading in the great mass of cases for a professional solicitor to request donations “for” a specific charity without announcing his professional status. Compensatory employment is, I would judge, the natural order of things, and one would expect volunteer solicitors to announce that status as a selling point.
The dictum in footnote 11 represents a departure from our traditional understanding, embodied in the First Amendment, that where the dissemination of ideas is concerned, it is safer to assume that the people are smart enough to get the information they need than to assume that the government is wise or impartial enough to make the judgment for them.