Cite as: 538 U. S. 600 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
800. "[M]ore benign and narrowly tailored options" that would not chill solicitation altogether were available; for example, the Court suggested, "the State may itself publish the detailed financial disclosure forms it requires professional fundraisers to file," and "[it] may vigorously enforce its antifraud laws to prohibit professional fundraisers from obtaining money on false pretenses or by making false statements." Ibid.
III
A
The Court's opinions in Schaumburg, Munson, and Riley took care to leave a corridor open for fraud actions to guard the public against false or misleading charitable solicitations. See Schaumburg, 444 U. S., at 637; Munson, 467 U. S., at 961, and n. 9; Riley, 487 U. S., at 795, 800.7 As those decisions recognized, and as we further explain below, there are differences critical to First Amendment concerns between fraud actions trained on representations made in individual cases and statutes that categorically ban solicitations when fund-raising costs run high. See Part III-B, infra. Simply labeling an action one for "fraud," of course, will not carry the day. For example, had the complaint against Telemarketers charged fraud based solely on the percentage of donations the fundraisers would retain, or their failure to alert potential donors to their fee arrangements at the start of each telephone call, Riley would support swift dismissal.8 A
State's Attorney General surely cannot gain case-by-case ground this Court has declared off limits to legislators.
7 We are therefore unpersuaded by Telemarketers' plea that they lacked fair notice of their vulnerability to fraud actions. See Brief for Respondents 46, 49-50.
8 Although fundraiser retention of 85 percent of donations is significantly higher than the 35 percent limit in Riley, this Court has not yet accepted any percentage-based measure as dispositive. See supra, at 615 (quoting Riley v. National Federation of Blind of N. C., Inc., 487 U. S. 781, 793 (1988)).
617
Page: Index Previous 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007