802
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
ter, we held it could not confine the forum "to one category of interested individuals." Id., at 175. The exclusion would skew the debate and deprive decisionmakers of the benefit of other voices. Id., at 175-176.
It is no answer to say Congress does not have to create access channels at all, so it may limit access as it pleases. Whether or not a government has any obligation to make railroads common carriers, under the Equal Protection Clause it could not define common carriage in ways that discriminate against suspect classes. See Bailey v. Patterson, 369 U. S. 31, 33 (1962) (per curiam) (States may not require railroads to segregate the races). For the same reason, even if Congress has no obligation to impose common-carriage rules on cable operators or retain them forever, it is not at liberty to exclude certain forms of speech from their protection on the suspect basis of content. See Perry, supra, at 45-46.
I do not foreclose the possibility that the Government could create a forum limited to certain topics or to serving the special needs of certain speakers or audiences without its actions being subject to strict scrutiny. This possibility seems to trouble the plurality, which wonders if a local government must "show a compelling state interest if it builds a band shell in the park and dedicates it solely to classical music (but not to jazz)." Ante, at 750. This is not the correct analogy. These cases are more akin to the Government's creation of a band shell in which all types of music might be performed except for rap music. The provisions here are content-based discriminations in the strong sense of suppressing a certain form of expression that the Government dislikes or otherwise wishes to exclude on account of its effects, and there is no justification for anything but strict scrutiny here.
Giving government free rein to exclude speech it dislikes by delimiting public fora (or common-carriage provisions) would have pernicious effects in the modern age. Minds are
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