520
Opinion of Thomas, J.
First Amendment makes for us. Virginia is free to require whatever professional standards it wishes of its pharmacists; it may subsidize them or protect them from competition in other ways. But it may not do so by keeping the public in ignorance of the entirely lawful terms that competing pharmacists are offering. In this sense, the justifications Virginia has offered for suppressing the flow of prescription drug price information, far from persuading us that the flow is not protected by the First Amendment, have reinforced our view that it is." Id., at 769-770 (citation omitted).
The Court opined that false or misleading advertising was not protected, on the grounds that the accuracy of advertising claims may be more readily verifiable than is the accuracy of political or other claims, and that "commercial" speech is made more durable by its profit motive. Id., at 771, and n. 24. The Court also made clear that it did not envision protection for advertising that proposes an illegal transaction. Id., at 772-773 (distinguishing Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Comm'n on Human Relations, 413 U. S. 376 (1973)).
In case after case following Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy,
the Court, and individual Members of the Court, have continued to stress the importance of free dissemination of information about commercial choices in a market economy; the antipaternalistic premises of the First Amendment; the impropriety of manipulating consumer choices or public opinion through the suppression of accurate "commercial" information; the near impossibility of severing "commercial" speech from speech necessary to democratic decisionmaking; and the dangers of permitting the government to do covertly what it might not have been able to muster the political support to do openly.2
2 See Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Willingboro, 431 U. S. 85, 96-97 (1977); Bates v. State Bar of Ariz., 433 U. S. 350, 364-365, 368-369, 374-375, 376- 377 (1977); Friedman v. Rogers, 440 U. S. 1, 8-9 (1979); id., at 23-24
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