780
O'Connor, J., dissenting
have envisioned circumstances analogous to those in Ohralik, where there is a substantial risk that the CPA will use his professional expertise to mislead or coerce a naive potential client.
Indeed, the majority scrupulously declines to question the validity of Florida's rule. The majority never analyzes the rule itself under Central Hudson, cf. Posadas de Puerto Rico Associates v. Tourism Co. of Puerto Rico, 478 U. S. 328, 340- 344 (1986) (analyzing "facial" validity of law regulating commercial speech by employing Central Hudson test), but instead seeks to avoid this analysis by characterizing Fane's suit as an "as-applied" challenge. See ante, at 763, 767, 770, 771, 774. I am surprised that the majority has taken this approach without explaining or even articulating the underlying assumption: that a commercial speaker can claim First Amendment protection for particular instances of prohibited commercial speech, even where the prohibitory law satisfies Central Hudson. Board of Trustees of State University of N. Y. v. Fox, 492 U. S. 469 (1989), appears to say the opposite, see id., at 476-486, and we recently granted certiorari in a case that poses precisely this issue, see United States v. Edge Broadcasting Co., 506 U. S. 1032 (1992).
In any event, the instant case is not an "as-applied" challenge, in the sense that a speaker points to special features of his own speech as constitutionally protected from a valid law. Cf. Zauderer, supra, at 644. The majority obscures this point by stating that Florida's rule "cannot be sustained as applied to Fane's proposed speech," ante, at 767, and by paraphrasing Fane's affidavit at length to show that he does not propose to solicit vulnerable clients, ante, at 775-776. But I do not understand the relevance of that affidavit here, because the broad remedy granted by the District Court goes well beyond Fane's own speech.
"Florida Administrative Code, §§ 21A-24.002(2) and (3), places an unconstitutional ban on protected commercial speech in violation of the first . . . amendmen[t].
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