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Opinion of Kennedy, J.
dynamic as that presented here. Walters v. National Assn. of Radiation Survivors, 473 U. S. 305, 331, n. 12 (1985). And Congress is not obligated, when enacting its statutes, to make a record of the type that an administrative agency or court does to accommodate judicial review.
That Congress' predictive judgments are entitled to substantial deference does not mean, however, that they are insulated from meaningful judicial review altogether. On the contrary, we have stressed in First Amendment cases that the deference afforded to legislative findings does "not fore-close our independent judgment of the facts bearing on an issue of constitutional law." Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U. S. 115, 129 (1989); see also Landmark Communications, Inc. v. Virginia, 435 U. S. 829, 843 (1978). This obligation to exercise independent judgment when First Amendment rights are implicated is not a license to reweigh the evidence de novo, or to replace Congress' factual predictions with our own. Rather, it is to assure that, in formulating its judgments, Congress has drawn reasonable inferences based on substantial evidence. See Century Communications Corp. v. FCC, 835 F. 2d 292, 304 (CADC 1987) ("[W]hen trenching on first amendment interests, even incidentally, the government must be able to adduce either empirical support or at least sound reasoning on behalf of its measures").
The Government's assertion that the must-carry rules are necessary to protect the viability of broadcast television rests on two essential propositions: (1) that unless cable operators are compelled to carry broadcast stations, significant numbers of broadcast stations will be refused carriage on cable systems; and (2) that the broadcast stations denied carriage will either deteriorate to a substantial degree or fail altogether.
As support for the first proposition, the Government relies upon a 1988 FCC study showing, at a time when no must-carry rules were in effect, that approximately 20 percent of cable systems reported dropping or refusing carriage to one
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