Cite as: 525 U. S. 182 (1999)
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
man v. Reed, 502 U. S. 279 (1992), we determined that Illinois' regulation of the use of party names and its law establishing signature requirements for nominating petitions severely burdened association by limiting new parties' access to the ballot, and held both challenged laws, as construed by the State Supreme Court, unconstitutional because they were not narrowly tailored. Id., at 288-290, 294. By contrast, we determined that Minnesota's law preventing a candidate from appearing on the ballot as the choice of more than one party burdened a party's access to the ballot and its associational rights, but not severely, and upheld the ban under lesser scrutiny. Timmons, 520 U. S., at 363. We likewise upheld Hawaii's prohibition on write-in voting, which imposed, at most, a "very limited" burden on voters' freedom of choice and association. Burdick, 504 U. S., at 437.
II
Colorado argues that its badge, registration, and reporting requirements impose "lesser" burdens, and consequently, each ought to be upheld as serving important state interests. I cannot agree.
A
The challenged badge requirement, Colo. Rev. Stat. § 1- 40-112(2) (1998), directly regulates the content of speech. The State requires that all petition circulators disclose, at the time they deliver their political message, their names and whether they were paid or unpaid. Therefore, the regulation must be evaluated under strict scrutiny. Moreover, the category of burdened speech is defined by its content— Colorado's badge requirement does not apply to those who circulate candidate petitions, only to those who circulate initiative or referendum proposals. See generally § 1-4-905 (candidate petition circulation requirements). Content-based regulation of speech typically must be narrowly tailored to a compelling state interest. See, e. g., Boos v.
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