Cite as: 518 U. S. 727 (1996)
Opinion of Thomas, J.
issue in these cases,6 the position adopted by the Court in Turner ineluctably leads to the conclusion that the federal access requirements are subject to some form of heightened scrutiny. See Turner, 512 U. S., at 661-662 (citing Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U. S. 781 (1989); United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367 (1968)). Under that view, content-neutral governmental impositions on an operator's editorial discretion may be sustained only if they further an important governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of free speech and are no greater than is essential to further the asserted interest. See id., at 377. Of course, the analysis I joined in Turner would have required strict scrutiny. 512 U. S., at 680-682 (O'Connor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
Petitioners must concede that cable access is not a constitutionally required entitlement and that the right they claim to leased and public access has, by definition, been governmentally created at the expense of cable operators' editorial
6 Following Turner, some commentators have questioned the constitutionality of leased and public access. See, e. g., J. Goodale, All About Cable § 6.04[5], pp. 6-38.6 to 6-38.7 (1996) ("In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in the Turner Broadcasting case, the constitutionality of both PEG access and leased access requirements would seem open to searching reexamination. . . . To the extent that an access requirement . . . is considered to be a content-based restriction on the speech of a cable system operator, it seems clear, after Turner Broadcasting, that such a requirement would be found to violate the operator's First Amendment rights" (footnotes omitted)); Ugland, Cable Television, New Technologies and the First Amendment After Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. F. C. C., 60 Mo. L. Rev. 799, 837 (1995) ("PEG requirements are content-based on their face because they force cable system operators to carry certain types of programming" (emphasis in original)); Perritt, Access to the National Information Infrastructure, 30 Wake Forest L. Rev. 51, 66 (1995) (leased access and public access requirements "were called into question in Turner"). Moreover, as Justice O'Connor noted in Turner, Congress' imposition of common-carrier-like obligations on cable operators may raise Takings Clause questions. 512 U. S., at 684 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). Such questions are not at issue here.
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