Cite as: 518 U. S. 727 (1996)
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
terms the access (including leased access) rules promulgated by the FCC in 1976:
"The access rules plainly impose common-carrier obligations on cable operators. Under the rules, cable systems are required to hold out dedicated channels on a first-come, nondiscriminatory basis. Operators are prohibited from determining or influencing the content of access programming. And the rules delimit what operators may charge for access and use of equipment." Midwest Video, 440 U. S., at 701-702 (citations and footnotes omitted).
Indeed, we struck down the FCC's rules as beyond the agency's statutory authority at the time precisely because they made cable operators common carriers. Id., at 702- 709. The FCC characterizes § 612 as a form of common-carrier requirement, App. to Pet. for Cert. 139a-140a, as does the Government, Brief for Federal Respondents 23.
Section 10(a) authorizes cable operators to ban indecent programming on leased access channels. We have held that a law precluding a common carrier from transmitting protected speech is subject to strict scrutiny, Sable Communications, 492 U. S., at 131 (striking down ban on indecent telephonic communications), but we have not had occasion to consider the standard for reviewing a law, such as § 10(a), permitting a carrier in its discretion to exclude specified speech.
Laws removing common-carriage protection from a single form of speech based on its content should be reviewed under the same standard as content-based restrictions on speech in a public forum. Making a cable operator a common carrier does not create a public forum in the sense of taking property from private control and dedicating it to public use; rather, regulations of a common carrier dictate the manner in which private control is exercised. A common-carriage
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