136
Opinion of the Court
justification for this ordinance: raising revenue for police services. While this undoubtedly is an important government responsibility, it does not justify a content-based permit fee. See id., at 229-231.
Petitioner insists that its ordinance cannot be unconstitutionally content based because it contains much of the same language as did the state statute upheld in Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U. S. 569 (1941). Although the Supreme Court of New Hampshire had interpreted the statute at issue in Cox to authorize the municipality to charge a permit fee for the "maintenance of public order," no fee was actually assessed. See id., at 577. Nothing in this Court's opinion suggests that the statute, as interpreted by the New Hampshire Supreme Court, called for charging a premium in the case of a controversial political message delivered before a hostile audience. In light of the Court's subsequent First Amendment jurisprudence, we do not read Cox to permit such a premium.
C
Petitioner, as well as the Court of Appeals and the District Court, all rely on the maximum allowable fee as the touch-stone of constitutionality. Petitioner contends that the $1,000 cap on the fee ensures that the ordinance will not result in content-based discrimination. The ordinance was found unconstitutional by the Court of Appeals because the $1,000 cap was not sufficiently low to be "nominal." Neither the $1,000 cap on the fee charged, nor even some lower nominal cap, could save the ordinance because in this context, the level of the fee is irrelevant. A tax based on the content of speech does not become more constitutional because it is a small tax.
The lower courts derived their requirement that the permit fee be "nominal" from a sentence in the opinion in Mur-dock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 (1943). In Murdock, the Court invalidated a flat license fee levied on distributors of religious literature. In distinguishing the case from Cox,
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