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Syllabus
method to promote these commodities is neither accepted nor rejected by this Court, which instead stresses the importance of the statutory context in which the question at issue arises. Under the AMAA, detailed marketing orders have displaced many aspects of independent business activity characterizing other portions of the economy in which competition is fully protected by the antitrust laws. Business entities are compelled to fund generic advertising as part of a broader collective enterprise in which the regulatory scheme already constrains their freedom to act independently. It is in this context that the Court considers whether to review the assessments at issue under the standard appropriate to economic regulation or under a heightened First Amendment standard. Pp. 467-469. (b) The Ninth Circuit erred in relying on Central Hudson to test the constitutionality of market order assessments for promotional advertising. Three characteristics of the generic advertising scheme distinguish it from laws this Court has found to abridge free speech. First, the marketing orders impose no restraint on any respondents' freedom to communicate any message to any audience. Second, they do not compel anyone to engage in any actual or symbolic speech. Cf., e. g., West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 632. Third, they do not compel anyone to endorse or to finance any political or ideological views. Cf., e. g., Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705. Indeed, since respondents market California tree fruits, they may all be presumed to agree with the central message of the speech generated by the generic program. Thus, none of the Court's First Amendment jurisprudence supports the suggestion that the promotional regulations should be scrutinized under a different standard from that applicable to the marketing orders' other anticompetitive features. Respondents' criticisms of the generic advertising and their contention that the assessments reduce the sums respondents use to conduct their own advertising provide no basis for concluding that accurate advertising constitutes an abridgment of anybody's right to speak freely. Nor does the First Amendment forbid all compelled financial contributions to fund advertising. Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U. S. 209, and the cases that follow it, prohibit compelled contributions for expressive activities that conflict with one's freedom of belief. The advertising here does not promote any particular message with which respondents disagree. The fact that respondents may prefer to foster that message in other ways does not make this case comparable to those involving political or ideological disagreement. Moreover, some of the relevant cases suggest that assessments to fund a lawful collective program may be used to pay for nonideological speech over the objection of some members of the group if the speech is germane to the purpose for which the compelled association was justified.
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