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

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

O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment

ment does not license the States to ignore their obligations under other provisions of the Constitution." Capital Cities Cable, Inc. v. Crisp, 467 U. S. 691, 712 (1984). See also Larkin v. Grendel's Den, Inc., 459 U. S. 116, 122, n. 5 (1982) ("The State may not exercise its power under the Twenty-first Amendment in a way which impinges upon the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment"); Craig, supra, at 206 ("Neither the text nor the history of the Twenty-first Amendment suggests that it qualifies individual rights protected by the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment where the sale or use of liquor is concerned" (internal quotation marks omitted)). The Twenty-first Amendment does not trump First Amendment rights or add a presumption of validity to a regulation that cannot otherwise satisfy First Amendment requirements.

The Court of Appeals relied on California v. LaRue, 409 U. S. 109, 118-119 (1972), for its determination that the Twenty-first Amendment provided an "added presumption" of the regulation's validity. There, this Court upheld a State's regulations prohibiting establishments licensed to sell liquor by the drink from offering explicitly sexual entertainment. As we recently explained in Coors, "LaRue did not involve commercial speech about alcohol, but instead concerned the regulation of nude dancing in places where alcohol was served." 514 U. S., at 483, n. 2. The cases following LaRue similarly involved the regulation of nude or nearly nude dancing in establishments licensed to serve alcohol. New York State Liquor Authority v. Bellanca, 452 U. S. 714 (1981) (per curiam); Newport v. Iacobucci, 479 U. S. 92 (1986) (per curiam). Nothing in LaRue suggested that the Twenty-first Amendment would permit a State to prohibit the kind of speech at issue here, and as discussed above, the text and history of the Twenty-first Amendment clearly indicate that the Amendment was not intended to supplant the general application of constitutional provisions, except for its limited exception to the Commerce Clause's normal

533

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