Cite as: 509 U. S. 418 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
The Court of Appeals, however, affirmed the District Court's holding that the statutes were invalid because, as applied to Edge, they failed to advance directly the governmental interest supporting them. According to the Court of Appeals, whose judgment we are reviewing, this was because the 127,000 people who reside in Edge's nine-county listening area in North Carolina receive most of their radio, newspaper, and television communications from Virginia-based media. These North Carolina residents who might listen to Edge "are inundated with Virginia's lottery advertisements" and hence, the court stated, prohibiting Edge from advertising Virginia's lottery "is ineffective in shielding North Carolina residents from lottery information." This "ineffective or remote measure to support North Carolina's desire to discourage gambling cannot justify infringement upon commercial free speech." App. to Pet. for Cert. 6a, 7a. In our judgment, the courts below erred in that respect.
A
The third Central Hudson factor asks whether the "regulation directly advances the governmental interest asserted." 447 U. S., at 566. It is readily apparent that this question cannot be answered by limiting the inquiry to whether the governmental interest is directly advanced as applied to a single person or entity. Even if there were no advancement as applied in that manner—in this case, as applied to Edge—there would remain the matter of the regulation's general application to others—in this case, to all other radio and television stations in North Carolina and countrywide. The courts below thus asked the wrong question in ruling on the third Central Hudson factor. This is not to say that the validity of the statutes' application to Edge is an irrelevant inquiry, but that issue properly should be dealt with under the fourth factor of the Central Hudson test. As we have said, "[t]he last two steps of the Central Hudson analysis basically involve a consideration of the 'fit' between
427
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