822
Opinion of Thomas, J.
discretion. Just because the Court has apparently accepted, for now, the proposition that the Constitution permits some degree of forced speech in the cable context does not mean that the beneficiaries of a Government-imposed forced speech program enjoy additional First Amendment protections beyond those normally afforded to purely private speakers.
We have said that "[i]n the realm of private speech or expression, government regulation may not favor one speaker over another," Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819, 828 (1995), but this principle hardly supports petitioners' claims, for, if they do anything, the leased and public access requirements favor access programmers over cable operators. I do not see §§ 10(a) and (c) as independent restrictions on programmers, but as intricate parts of the leased and public access restrictions imposed by Congress (and state and local governments) on cable operators. The question petitioners pose is whether §§ 10(a) and (c) are improper restrictions on their free speech rights, but Turner strongly suggests that the proper question is whether the leased and public access requirements (with §§ 10(a) and (c)) are improper restrictions on the operators' free speech rights. In my view, the constitutional presumption properly runs in favor of the operators' editorial discretion, and that discretion may not be burdened without a compelling reason for doing so. Petitioners' view that the constitutional presumption favors their asserted right to speak on access channels is directly contrary to Turner and our established precedents.
It is one thing to compel an operator to carry leased and public access speech, in apparent violation of Tornillo, but it is another thing altogether to say that the First Amendment forbids Congress to give back part of the operators' editorial discretion, which all recognize as fundamentally protected, in favor of a broader access right. It is no answer to say that leased and public access are content neutral and that
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