722
Opinion of the Court
effort "to persuade or otherwise influence"). Nevertheless, we have never suggested that the kind of cursory examination that might be required to exclude casual conversation from the coverage of a regulation of picketing would be problematic.30
In Carey v. Brown we examined a general prohibition of peaceful picketing that contained an exemption for picketing a place of employment involved in a labor dispute. We concluded that this statute violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because it discriminated between lawful and unlawful conduct based on the content of the picketers' messages. That discrimination was impermissible because it accorded preferential treatment to expression concerning one particular subject matter—labor disputes—while prohibiting discussion of all other issues. Although our opinion stressed that "it is the content of the speech that determines whether it is within or without the statute's blunt prohibition," 447 U. S., at 462, we appended a footnote to that sentence explaining that it was the fact that the statute placed a prohibition on discussion of particular topics, while others were allowed, that was constitutionally
30 In United States v. Grace, 461 U. S. 171 (1983), after examining a federal statute that was "[i]nterpreted and applied" as "prohibit[ing] picketing and leafletting, but not other expressive conduct" within the Supreme Court building and grounds, we concluded that "it is clear that the prohibition is facially content-neutral." Id., at 181, n. 10. Similarly, we have recognized that statutes can equally restrict all "picketing." See, e. g., Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92, 98 (1972) ("This is not to say that all picketing must always be allowed. We have continually recognized that reasonable 'time, place and manner' regulations of picketing may be necessary to further significant governmental interests"), and cases cited. See also Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U. S. 474 (1988) (upholding a general ban on residential picketing). And our decisions in Schenck and Madsen both upheld injunctions that also prohibited "demonstrating." Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western N. Y., 519 U. S. 357, 366-367, n. 3 (1997); Madsen, 512 U. S., at 759.
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