Cite as: 507 U. S. 410 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
guishes between commercial and noncommercial publications that are equally responsible for those problems. In Bolger, however, in rejecting the Government's reliance on its interest in protecting the public from "offensive" speech, "[we] specifically declined to recognize a distinction between commercial and noncommercial speech that would render this interest a sufficient justification for a prohibition of commercial speech." 463 U. S., at 71-72 (citing Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U. S. 678, 701, n. 28 (1977)). Moreover, the fact that the regulation "provide[d] only the most limited incremental support for the interest asserted," 463 U. S., at 73—that it achieved only a "marginal degree of protection," ibid., for that interest—supported our holding that the prohibition was invalid. Finally, in Bolger, as in this case, the burden on commercial speech was imposed by denying the speaker access to one method of distribution— there the United States mails, and here the placement of newsracks on public property—without interfering with alternative means of access to the audience. As then-Justice Rehnquist explained in his separate opinion, that fact did not minimize the significance of the burden:
"[T]he Postal Service argues that Youngs can communicate with the public otherwise than through the mail. [This argument falls] wide of the mark. A prohibition on the use of the mails is a significant restriction of First Amendment rights. We have noted that ' "[t]he United States may give up the Post Office when it sees fit, but while it carries it on the use of the mails is as much a part of free speech as the right to use our tongues." ' Blount v. Rizzi, 400 U. S., at 416, quoting Milwaukee Social Democratic Publishing Co. v. Burleson, 255 U. S. 407, 437 (1921) (Holmes, J., dissenting)." Id., at 79-80 (footnote omitted).
In a similar vein, even if we assume, arguendo, that the city might entirely prohibit the use of newsracks on public
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