Cite as: 521 U. S. 457 (1997)
Souter, J., dissenting
U. S. 557, 565 (1980); Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy, supra, at 771-772. But however long the pedigree of such mandates may be, and however broad the government's authority to impose them, Zauderer carries no authority for a mandate unrelated to the interest in avoiding misleading or incomplete commercial messages.
II
For the reasons discussed above, none of the Court's grounds suffices for discounting respondents' interests in expression here and treating these compelled advertising schemes as regulations of purely economic conduct instead of commercial speech. I would therefore adhere to the principle laid down in our compelled-speech cases: laws requiring an individual to engage in or pay for expressive activities are reviewed under the same standard that applies to laws prohibiting one from engaging in or paying for such activities. Under the test for commercial speech, the law may be held constitutional only if (1) the interest being pursued by the government is substantial, and (2) the regulation directly advances that interest and (3) is narrowly tailored to serve it. Central Hudson, supra, at 566.6 The burden is on the
6 Contrary to some arguments offered by respondents, these advertising schemes are not removed from the commercial category on the grounds that they are content based, producing not mere "dissemination of 'purely factual and uncontroversial information,' " Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 573 (1995) (quoting Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio, 471 U. S. 626, 651 (1985)), but controversial and ideological messages, and even objectionable sexual imagery. Regulation of commercial speech necessarily turns on some assessment of content, Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748, 761 (1976), yet that fact has never been thought sufficient to require a standard of strict scrutiny. And we have consistently held that advertising does not automatically lose its character as commercial speech simply because it may do much more than propose a transaction or disseminate purely factual information. See, e. g., Board of Trustees of State Univ. of N. Y. v. Fox, 492 U. S. 469, 473-475 (1989); Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products
491
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