798
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
mandate, nonetheless, serves the same function as a public forum. It ensures open, nondiscriminatory access to the means of communication. This purpose is evident in the statute itself and in the committee findings supporting it. Congress described the leased access requirements as intended "to promote competition in the delivery of diverse sources of video programming and to assure that the widest possible diversity of information sources are made available to the public from cable systems in a manner consistent with growth and development of cable systems." 47 U. S. C. § 532(a). The House Committee reporting the 1984 cable bill acknowledged that, in general, market demand would prompt cable operators to provide diverse programming. It recognized, though, the incentives cable operators might have to exclude "programming which represents a social or political viewpoint that a cable operator does not wish to disseminate, or . . . competes with a program service already being provided by that cable system." H. R. Rep. No. 98- 934, at 48. In its view, the leased access provisions were narrowly drawn structural regulations of private industry, cf. Associated Press v. United States, 326 U. S. 1 (1945), to enhance the free flow and diversity of information available to the public without governmental intrusion into decisions about program content. H. R. Rep. No. 98-934, supra, at 32-35. The functional equivalence of designating a public forum and mandating common carriage suggests the same scrutiny should be applied to attempts in either setting to impose content discrimination by law. Under our precedents, the scrutiny is strict.
"The Constitution forbids a State to enforce certain exclusions from a forum generally open to the public even if it was not required to create the forum in the first place. Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U. S. 263 (1981) (university meeting facilities); City of Madison Joint School District v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm'n, 429 U. S. 167 (1976) (school board meeting); Southeast-
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