44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island, 517 U. S. 484 (1996)

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Cite as: 517 U. S. 484 (1996)

Opinion of Stevens, J.

that target truthful, nonmisleading commercial messages rarely protect consumers from such harms.12 Instead, such bans often serve only to obscure an "underlying governmental policy" that could be implemented without regulating speech. Central Hudson, 447 U. S., at 566, n. 9. In this way, these commercial speech bans not only hinder consumer choice, but also impede debate over central issues of public policy. See id., at 575 (Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment).13

Precisely because bans against truthful, nonmisleading commercial speech rarely seek to protect consumers from either deception or overreaching, they usually rest solely on the offensive assumption that the public will respond "irrationally" to the truth. Linmark, 431 U. S., at 96. The First Amendment directs us to be especially skeptical of regulations that seek to keep people in the dark for what the government perceives to be their own good. That teaching applies equally to state attempts to deprive consumers of accurate information about their chosen products:

"The commercial marketplace, like other spheres of our social and cultural life, provides a forum where ideas and information flourish. Some of the ideas and information are vital, some of slight worth. But the general rule is that the speaker and the audience, not the gov-12 In Discovery Network, we held that the city's categorical ban on commercial newsracks attached too much importance to the distinction between commercial and noncommercial speech. After concluding that the esthetic and safety interests served by the newsrack ban bore no relationship whatsoever to the prevention of commercial harms, we rejected the State's attempt to justify its ban on the sole ground that it targeted commercial speech. See 507 U. S., at 428.

13 This case bears out the point. Rhode Island seeks to reduce alcohol consumption by increasing alcohol price; yet its means of achieving that goal deprives the public of their chief source of information about the reigning price level of alcohol. As a result, the State's price advertising ban keeps the public ignorant of the key barometer of the ban's effectiveness: the alcohol beverages' prices.

503

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