Denver Area Ed. Telecommunications Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, 518 U.S. 727, 110 (1996)

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836

DENVER AREA ED. TELECOMMUNICATIONS CONSORTIUM, INC. v. FCC

Opinion of Thomas, J.

ten request. Thus, subscribers who do not want the blocked programming are protected, and subscribers who do want it may request access. Once a subscriber requests access to blocked programming, however, the subscriber remains free to use other methods, such as lockboxes, to regulate the kind of programming shown on those channels in that home.19

Thus, petitioners are wrong to portray § 10(b) as a highly ineffective method of screening individual programs, see Brief for Petitioners in No. 95-124, at 43, and the majority is similarly wrong to suggest that a person cannot "watch a single program . . . without letting the 'patently offensive' channel in its entirety invade his household for days, perhaps weeks, at a time," ante, at 754; see ante, at 756. Given the limited scope of § 10(b) as a default setting, I see nothing constitutionally infirm about Congress' decision to permit the cable operator 30 days to unblock or reblock the segregated channel.

Petitioners also claim that § 10(b) and its implementing regulations are impermissibly underinclusive because they apply only to leased access programming. In R. A. V. v. St. Paul, 505 U. S. 377 (1992), we rejected the view that a content-based restriction is subject to a separate and independent "underinclusiveness" evaluation. Id., at 387 ("In our view, the First Amendment imposes not an 'underinclusiveness' limitation but a 'content discrimination' limitation upon a State's prohibition of proscribable speech"). See also ante, at 757 ("Congress need not deal with every problem at once"). Also, petitioners' claim is in tension with the constitutional principle that Congress may not impose a remedy that is more restrictive than necessary to satisfy its asserted compelling interest and with their own arguments pressing that very principle. Cf. R. A. V., supra, at 402 (White, J., concurring in judgment) (though the "overbreadth doctrine

19 The lockbox provision, originally passed in 1984, was unaffected by the 1992 Act and remains fully available to every subscriber. 47 U. S. C. § 544(d)(2).

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