Cite as: 507 U. S. 410 (1993)
Blackmun, J., concurring
"not consistent with our prior cases and [did] not provide adequate protection for truthful, nonmisleading, noncoercive commercial speech." 447 U. S., at 573. I noted: "Permissible restraints on commercial speech have been limited to measures designed to protect consumers from fraudulent, misleading, or coercive sales techniques." Id., at 574. Under the analysis adopted by the Central Hudson majority, misleading and coercive commercial speech and commercial speech proposing illegal activities are addressed in the first prong of the four-part test. Yet commercial speech that survives the first prong—i. e., that is not misleading or coercive and that concerns lawful activities—is entitled only to an intermediate level of protection. Furthermore, the "substantial" government interest that Central Hudson requires to justify restrictions on commercial speech does not have to be related to protecting against deception or coercion, for Central Hudson itself left open the possibility that the government's substantial interest in energy conservation might justify a more narrowly drawn restriction on truthful advertising that promotes energy consumption. See id., at 569-572.
Thus, it is little wonder that when the city of Cincinnati wanted to remove some newsracks from its streets, it chose to eliminate all the commercial newsracks first although its reasons had nothing to do with either the deceptiveness of particular commercial publications or the particular characteristics of commercial newsracks themselves. First, Cincinnati could rely on this Court's broad statements that commercial speech "is of less constitutional moment than other forms of speech," id., at 563, n. 5, and occupies a "subordinate position in the scale of First Amendment values," Ohralik, 436 U. S., at 456. Second, it knew that under Central Hudson its restrictions on commercial speech would be examined with less enthusiasm and with less exacting scrutiny than any restrictions it might impose on other speech. Indeed, it appears that Cincinnati felt it had no choice under
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