Court Opinion

ID: 9714808
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:46:06.74641+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:28.774487
License: Public Domain

MURRAY, Justice,
dissenting.
It is not my belief that the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Queensgate Investment Co. v. Liquor Control Commission, 69 Ohio St.2d 361, 433 N.E.2d 138 (1982), for want of a substantial federal question controls the ease at bar. For this reason, I maintain my position espoused in Rhode Island Liquor Stores Association v. The Evening Call, 497 A.2d 331 (R.I.1985), that it is incumbent upon the party seeking to suppress truthful and nonmisleading commercial speech to justify that suppression. In the instant case, as in the Evening Call case, there has been no showing that the suppression of speech furthers a substantial interest of the State of Rhode Island. I must therefore respectfully dissent from the majority opinion.
Queensgate involved an Ohio Liquor Control Commission regulation which expressly stated that “[advertising may include the retail price of the original container or packages” of alcoholic beverages. Queensgate Investment Co., 69 Ohio St.2d at 362 n. 1, 433 N.E.2d at 139 n. 1. What was prohibited by the Queensgate regulation was the advertisement of prices of individual drinks, served opened and for consumption on the premises. This more narrowly drawn restriction on commercial speech is easily distinguished from § 3-8-7, which is a ban on any advertisement of price. Further, the licensee in the instant case sought to advertise prices of alcoholic beverages in a Connecticut newspaper, not a Rhode Island newspaper. In contrast, the advertisement in Queensgate was circulated within the State of Ohio. It appears to me that all would agree that Rhode Island has no substantial interest in protecting Connecticut citizens against the *739evils of intemperance, especially where the Connecticut Legislature has not seen fit to do so by restricting price advertisements of alcholic beverages. Rhode Island’s police powers do not reach beyond its borders. Bigelow v. Virginia, 421 U.S. 809, 827-28, 95 S.Ct. 2222, 2235, 44 L.Ed.2d 600, 615 (1975). It is patent that any interest it asserts outside those borders is entitled to little, if any, weight. Id.
I am persuaded that upon all these considerations, as well as the Supreme Court’s admonishment that its summary dispositions are binding precedent only on “the precise issues presented and necessarily decided,” Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173, 176, 97 S.Ct. 2238, 2240, 53 L.Ed.2d 199, 205 (1977), the per curiam opinion of the Ohio Supreme Court in Queensgate is not controlling.
I would hold that the Rhode Island Liquor Control Administrator has failed to justify its supression of commercial speech and would, therefore, reverse the judgment of the Superior Court.