Cite as: 518 U. S. 727 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
sions do not adequately protect children from "patently offensive" material broadcast on ordinary channels, how could one justify more severe leased channel restrictions when (given ordinary channel programming) they would yield so little additional protection for children?
The record does not answer these questions. It does not explain why, under the new Act, blocking alone—without written access requests—adequately protects children from exposure to regular sex-dedicated channels, but cannot adequately protect those children from programming on similarly sex-dedicated channels that are leased. It does not explain why a simple subscriber blocking request system, perhaps a phone-call-based system, would adequately protect children from "patently offensive" material broadcast on ordinary non-sex-dedicated channels (i. e., almost all channels) but a far more restrictive segregate/ block/written-access system is needed to protect children from similar broadcasts on what (in the absence of the segregation requirement) would be non-sex-dedicated channels that are leased. Nor is there any indication Congress thought the new ordinary channel protections less than adequate.
The answers to the questions are not obvious. We have no empirical reason to believe, for example, that sex-dedicated channels are all (or mostly) leased channels, or that "patently offensive" programming on non-sex-dedicated channels is found only (or mostly) on leased channels. To the contrary, the parties' briefs (and major city television guides) provide examples of what seems likely to be such programming broadcast over both kinds of channels.
We recognize, as the Government properly points out, that Congress need not deal with every problem at once. Cf. Semler v. Oregon Bd. of Dental Examiners, 294 U. S. 608, 610 (1935) (the legislature need not "strike at all evils at the same time"); and Congress also must have a degree of leeway in tailoring means to ends. Columbia Broadcasting, 412 U. S., at 102-103. But in light of the 1996 statute, it seems
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