Cite as: 518 U. S. 727 (1996)
Syllabus
that permits private cable operators to make editorial decisions, persuasively establishes that § 10(a) is a sufficiently tailored response to an extraordinarily important problem involving a complex balance of interests. Sable, supra, at 128, and Turner, supra, at 637-641, distinguished. Pp. 737-748. (b) Petitioners' reliance on this Court's "public forum" cases is unavailing. It is unnecessary and unwise to decide whether or how to apply the public forum doctrine to leased access channels. First, it is not clear whether that doctrine should be imported wholesale into common carriage regulation of such a new and changing area. Second, although limited public forums are permissible, the Court has not yet determined whether the decision to limit a forum is necessarily subject to the highest level of scrutiny, and these cases do not require that it do so now. Finally, and most important, the features that make § 10(a) an acceptable constraint on speech also make it an acceptable limitation on access to the claimed public forum. Pp. 749-750. (c) Section 10(a)'s definition of the materials it regulates is not impermissibly vague. Because the language used is similar to that adopted in Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15, 24, as a "guidelin[e]" for state obscenity laws, it would appear to narrow cable operators' program-screening authority to materials that involve the same kind of sexually explicit materials that would be obscene under Miller, but that might have "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value" or nonprurient purposes, ibid. That the definition is not overly broad is further indicated by this Court's construction of the phrase "patently offensive," see Pacifica, supra, at 748, 750, which would narrow the category late at night when the audience is basically adult, and by the fact that § 10(a) permits operators to screen programs only pursuant to a "written and published policy." The definition's "reasonabl[e] belie[f]" qualifier seems designed to provide a legal excuse for the operator's honest mistake, and it constrains the operator's discretion as much as it protects it. Pp. 750-753.
Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Stevens and Justice Souter, concluded in Part IV that § 10(c) violates the First Amendment. Section 10(c), although like § 10(a) a permissive provision, is different from § 10(a) for four reasons. First, cable operators have not historically exercised editorial control over public access channels, such that § 10(c)'s restriction on programmers' capacity to speak does not effect a counter-vailing removal of a restriction on cable operators' speech. Second, programming on those channels is normally subject to complex supervisory systems composed of both public and private elements, and § 10(c) is therefore likely less necessary to protect children. Third, the existence of a system that encourages and secures programming that the
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