658
Opinion of the Court
of "equalizing the relative ability of individuals and groups to influence the outcome of elections." Buckley, 424 U. S., at 48. We rejected that argument with the observation that Congress may not "abridge the rights of some persons to engage in political expression in order to enhance the relative voice of other segments of our society." Id., at 49, n. 55.
Our holding in Buckley does not support appellants' broad assertion that all speaker-partial laws are presumed invalid. Rather, it stands for the proposition that speaker-based laws demand strict scrutiny when they reflect the Government's preference for the substance of what the favored speakers have to say (or aversion to what the disfavored speakers have to say). See Regan v. Taxation with Representation of Wash., 461 U. S. 540, 548 (1983) (rejecting First Amendment challenge to differential tax treatment of veterans groups and other charitable organizations, but noting that the case would be different were there any "indication that the statute was intended to suppress any ideas or any demonstration that it has had that effect"). Because the expenditure limit in Buckley was designed to ensure that the political speech of the wealthy not drown out the speech of others, we found that it was concerned with the communicative impact of the regulated speech. See Buckley, supra, at 17 ("[I]t is beyond dispute that the interest in regulating the . . . giving or spending [of] money 'arises in some measure because the communication . . . is itself thought to be harmful' ") (quoting United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S., at 382). Indeed, were the expenditure limitation unrelated to the content of expression, there would have been no perceived need for Congress to "equaliz[e] the relative ability" of interested individuals to influence elections. 424 U. S., at 48. Buckley thus stands for the proposition that laws favoring some speakers over others demand strict scrutiny when the legislature's speaker preference reflects a content preference.
The question here is whether Congress preferred broadcasters over cable programmers based on the content of pro-
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