Cite as: 507 U. S. 410 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
There is ample support in the record for the conclusion that the city did not "establish the reasonable fit we require." Fox, 492 U. S., at 480. The ordinance on which it relied was an outdated prohibition against the distribution of any commercial handbills on public property. It was enacted long before any concern about newsracks developed. Its apparent purpose was to prevent the kind of visual blight caused by littering, rather than any harm associated with permanent, freestanding dispensing devices. The fact that the city failed to address its recently developed concern about newsracks by regulating their size, shape, appearance, or number indicates that it has not "carefully calculated" the costs and benefits associated with the burden on speech imposed by its prohibition.13 The benefit to be de-decisions require is a 'fit' between the legislature's ends and the means chosen to accomplish those ends—a fit that is not necessarily perfect, but reasonable; that represents not necessarily the single best disposition but one whose scope is in proportion to the interest served; that employs not necessarily the least restrictive means but, as we have put it in the other contexts discussed above, a means narrowly tailored to achieve the desired objective. Within those bounds we leave it to governmental decisionmakers to judge what manner of regulation may best be employed. . . . "Here we require the government goal to be substantial, and the cost to be carefully calculated. Moreover, since the State bears the burden of justifying its restrictions, it must affirmatively establish the reasonable fit we require." 492 U. S., at 480 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
13 We reject the city's argument that the lower courts' and our consideration of alternative, less drastic measures by which the city could effectuate its interests in safety and esthetics somehow violates Fox's holding that regulations on commercial speech are not subject to "least-restrictive-means" analysis. To repeat, see n. 12, supra, while we have rejected the "least-restrictive-means" test for judging restrictions on commercial speech, so too have we rejected mere rational-basis review. A regulation need not be "absolutely the least severe that will achieve the desired end," Fox, 492 U. S., at 480, but if there are numerous and obvious less-burdensome alternatives to the restriction on commercial speech, that is certainly a relevant consideration in determining whether the "fit" between ends and means is reasonable.
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