426
Opinion of the Court
have explained, the city's primary concern, as argued to us, is with the aggregate number of newsracks on its streets. On that score, however, all newsracks, regardless of whether they contain commercial or noncommercial publications, are equally at fault. In fact, the newspapers are arguably the greater culprit because of their superior number.
Cincinnati has not asserted an interest in preventing commercial harms by regulating the information distributed by respondent publishers' newsracks, which is, of course, the typical reason why commercial speech can be subject to greater governmental regulation than noncommercial speech. See, e. g., Bolger, 463 U. S., at 81 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment) ("[T]he commercial aspects of a message may provide a justification for regulation that is not present when the communication has no commercial character"); Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S., at 455-456 (commercial speech, unlike other varieties of speech, "occurs in an area traditionally subject to government regulation").21
A closer examination of one of the cases we have mentioned, Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products, demonstrates the fallacy of the city's argument that a reasonable fit is established by the mere fact that the entire burden imposed on commercial speech by its newsrack policy may in some small way limit the total number of newsracks on Cincinnati's sidewalks. Here, the city contends that safety concerns and visual blight may be addressed by a prohibition that distin-21 Moreover, the principal reason for drawing a distinction between commercial and noncommercial speech has little, if any, application to a regulation of their distribution practices. As we explained in Bolger: "Advertisers should not be permitted to immunize false or misleading product information from government regulation simply by including references to public issues." 463 U. S., at 68. The interest in preventing commercial harms justifies more intensive regulation of commercial speech than noncommercial speech even when they are intermingled in the same publications. On the other hand, the interest in protecting the free flow of information and ideas is still present when such expression is found in a commercial context.
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