Cite as: 520 U. S. 180 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to a portion of Part II-A-1.
Sections 4 and 5 of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 require cable television systems to dedicate some of their channels to local broadcast television stations. Earlier in this case, we held the so-called "must-carry" provisions to be content-neutral restrictions on speech, subject to intermediate First Amendment scrutiny under United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367, 377 (1968). A plurality of the Court considered the record as then developed insufficient to determine whether the provisions were narrowly tailored to further important governmental interests, and we remanded the case to the District Court for the District of Columbia for additional factfinding.
On appeal from the District Court's grant of summary judgment for appellees, the case now presents the two questions left open during the first appeal: First, whether the record as it now stands supports Congress' predictive judgment that the must-carry provisions further important governmental interests; and second, whether the provisions do not burden substantially more speech than necessary to further those interests. We answer both questions in the affirmative, and conclude the must-carry provisions are consistent with the First Amendment.
I
An outline of the Cable Act, Congress' purposes in adopting it, and the facts of the case are set out in detail in our first opinion, see Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 622 (1994) (Turner), and a more abbreviated summary will suffice here. Soon after Congress enacted the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 (Cable Act), Pub. L. 102-385, 106 Stat. 1460, appellants brought suit against the United States and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (both referred to here as the Government) in the United States District Court for
185
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007