434
Blackmun, J., concurring
tener's First Amendment interests, from which the protection of commercial speech largely derives, allow for certain specific kinds of government regulation that would not be permitted outside the context of commercial speech.
The Central Hudson majority went on to develop a four-part analysis commensurate with the supposed intermediate status of commercial speech. Under that test, a court reviewing restrictions on commercial speech must first determine whether the speech concerns a lawful activity and is not misleading.3 If the speech does not pass this preliminary threshold, then it is not protected by the First Amendment at all. Id., at 566. If it does pass the preliminary threshold, then the government is required to show (1) that the asserted government interest is "substantial," (2) that the regulation at issue "directly advances" that interest, and (3) that the regulation "is not more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest." Ibid. The Court refined this test in Board of Trustees of State University of N. Y. v. Fox, 492 U. S., at 480, to clarify that a regulation limiting commercial speech can, in fact, be more extensive than is necessary to serve the government's interest as long as it is not unreasonably so. This intermediate level of scrutiny is a far cry from strict scrutiny, under which the government interest must be "compelling" and the regulation "narrowly tailored" to serve that interest. See, e. g., Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U. S. 652, 657 (1990).
In Central Hudson, I concurred only in the Court's judgment because I felt the majority's four-part analysis was
sion." Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S. 447, 456 (1978). As I explain in the text, however, the "limited measure of protection" our cases had afforded commercial speech reflected the fact that we had allowed "modes of regulation that might be impermissible in the realm of noncommercial expression" and not that we had relegated commercial speech to a "subordinate position in the scale of First Amendment values."
3 Central Hudson's reference to "misleading" speech appears to include speech that is inherently coercive, such as in-person solicitation. See 447 U. S., at 563, citing Ohralik, 436 U. S., at 464-465.
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