252
Opinion of the Court
rials to children, see Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U. S. 629 (1968), and it may enforce criminal penalties for unlawful solicitation. The precedents establish, however, that speech within the rights of adults to hear may not be silenced completely in an attempt to shield children from it. See Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U. S. 115 (1989). In Butler v. Michigan, 352 U. S. 380, 381 (1957), the Court invalidated a statute prohibiting distribution of an indecent publication because of its tendency to " 'incite minors to violent or depraved or immoral acts.' " A unanimous Court agreed upon the important First Amendment principle that the State could not "reduce the adult population . . . to reading only what is fit for children." Id., at 383. We have reaffirmed this holding. See United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., 529 U. S. 803, 814 (2000) ("[T]he objective of shielding children does not suffice to support a blanket ban if the protection can be accomplished by a less restrictive alternative"); Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S., at 875 (The "governmental interest in protecting children from harmful materials . . . does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults"); Sable Communications v. FCC, supra, at 130-131 (striking down a ban on "dial-a-porn" messages that had "the invalid effect of limiting the content of adult telephone conversations to that which is suitable for children to hear").
Here, the Government wants to keep speech from children not to protect them from its content but to protect them from those who would commit other crimes. The principle, however, remains the same: The Government cannot ban speech fit for adults simply because it may fall into the hands of children. The evil in question depends upon the actor's unlawful conduct, conduct defined as criminal quite apart from any link to the speech in question. This establishes that the speech ban is not narrowly drawn. The objective is to prohibit illegal conduct, but this restriction goes well
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