Cite as: 521 U. S. 457 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
In answering that question we stress the importance of the statutory context in which it arises. California nectar-ines and peaches are marketed pursuant to detailed marketing orders that have displaced many aspects of independent business activity that characterize other portions of the economy in which competition is fully protected by the antitrust laws. The business entities that are compelled to fund the generic advertising at issue in this litigation do so as a part of a broader collective enterprise in which their freedom to act independently is already constrained by the regulatory scheme. It is in this context that we consider whether we should review the assessments used to fund collective advertising, together with other collective activities, under the standard appropriate for the review of economic regulation or under a heightened standard appropriate for the review of First Amendment issues.
IV
Three characteristics of the regulatory scheme at issue distinguish it from laws that we have found to abridge the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. First, the marketing orders impose no restraint on the freedom of any producer to communicate any message to any audience.12 Second, they do not compel any person to engage in any actual or symbolic speech.13 Third, they do not compel the producers to endorse or to finance any political
12 This fact distinguishes the limits on commercial speech at issue in Central Hudson Gas & Elec. Corp. v. Public Serv. Comm'n of N. Y., 447 U. S. 557 (1980), Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748 (1976), and 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island, 517 U. S. 484 (1996).
13 This fact distinguishes the compelled speech in West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943), Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705 (1977), Riley v. National Federation of Blind of N. C., Inc., 487 U. S. 781 (1988), and the compelled association in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557 (1995).
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