406
White, J., concurring in judgment
at 395, to achieve the State's interest in regulating polling place premises.8
As with its rejection of the Court's categorical analysis, the majority offers no reasoned basis for discarding our firmly established strict scrutiny analysis at this time. The majority appears to believe that its doctrinal revisionism is necessary to prevent our elected lawmakers from prohibiting libel against members of one political party but not another and from enacting similarly preposterous laws. Ante, at 384. The majority is misguided.
Although the First Amendment does not apply to categories of unprotected speech, such as fighting words, the Equal Protection Clause requires that the regulation of unprotected speech be rationally related to a legitimate government interest. A defamation statute that drew distinctions on the basis of political affiliation or "an ordinance prohibiting only those legally obscene works that contain criticism of the city government," ibid., would unquestionably fail rational-basis review.9
8 Justice Scalia concurred in the judgment in Burson, reasoning that the statute, "though content based, is constitutional [as] a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral regulation of a nonpublic forum." Id., at 214. However, nothing in his reasoning in the present case suggests that a content-based ban on fighting words would be constitutional were that ban limited to nonpublic fora. Taken together, the two opinions suggest that, in some settings, political speech, to which "the First Amendment 'has its fullest and most urgent application,' " is entitled to less constitutional protection than fighting words. Eu v. San Francisco Cty. Democratic Central Comm., 489 U. S. 214, 223 (1989) (quoting Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy, 401 U. S. 265, 272 (1971)).
9 The majority is mistaken in stating that a ban on obscene works critical of government would fail equal protection review only because the ban would violate the First Amendment. Ante, at 384-385, n. 4. While decisions such as Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92 (1972), recognize that First Amendment principles may be relevant to an equal protection claim challenging distinctions that impact on protected expression, id., at 95-99, there is no basis for linking First and Fourteenth Amendment analysis in a case involving unprotected expression. Certainly, one
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