Cite as: 520 U. S. 180 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
and whether must-carry " 'burden[s] substantially more speech than is necessary to further the government's legitimate interests.' " Id., at 665 (quoting Ward, supra, at 799). Justice Stevens would have found the statute valid on the record then before us; he agreed to remand the case to ensure a judgment of the Court, and the case was returned to the District Court for further proceedings. 512 U. S., at 673-674 (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment); id., at 667-668.
The District Court oversaw another 18 months of factual development on remand "yielding a record of tens of thousands of pages" of evidence, Turner Broadcasting v. FCC, 910 F. Supp. 734, 755 (1995), comprised of materials acquired during Congress' three years of pre-enactment hearings, see Turner, supra, at 632-634, as well as additional expert submissions, sworn declarations and testimony, and industry documents obtained on remand. Upon consideration of the expanded record, a divided panel of the District Court again granted summary judgment to appellees. 910 F. Supp., at 751. The majority determined "Congress drew reasonable inferences" from substantial evidence before it to conclude that "in the absence of must-carry rules, 'signifi-cant' numbers of broadcast stations would be refused carriage." Id., at 742. The court found Congress drew on studies and anecdotal evidence indicating "cable operators had already dropped, refused to carry, or adversely repositioned significant numbers of local broadcasters," and suggesting that in the vast majority of cases the broadcasters were not restored to carriage in their prior position. Ibid. Noting evidence in the record before Congress and the testimony of experts on remand, id., at 743, the court decided the noncarriage problem would grow worse without must-carry because cable operators had refrained from dropping broadcast stations during Congress' investigation and the pend-ency of this litigation, id., at 742-743, and possessed increasing incentives to use their growing economic power to
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