Greater New Orleans Broadcasting Assn., Inc. v. United States, 527 U.S. 173, 4 (1999)

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176

GREATER NEW ORLEANS BROADCASTING ASSN., INC. v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. Federal law prohibits some, but by no means all, broadcast advertising of lotteries and casino gambling. In United States v. Edge Broadcasting Co., 509 U. S. 418 (1993), we upheld the constitutionality of 18 U. S. C. § 1304 as applied to broadcast advertising of Virginia's lottery by a radio station located in North Carolina, where no such lottery was authorized. Today we hold that § 1304 may not be applied to advertisements of private casino gambling that are broadcast by radio or television stations located in Louisiana, where such gambling is legal.

I

Through most of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, Congress adhered to a policy that not only discouraged the operation of lotteries and similar schemes, but forbade the dissemination of information concerning such enterprises by use of the mails, even when the lottery in question was chartered by a state legislature.1 Consistent with this Court's earlier view that commercial advertising was unprotected by the First Amendment, see Valentine v. Chrestensen, 316 U. S. 52, 54 (1942), we found that the notion that "lotteries . . . are supposed to have a demoralizing influence upon the people" provided sufficient justification for excluding circulars concerning such enterprises from the federal postal system, Ex parte Jackson, 96 U. S.

1 See, e. g., Act of Mar. 2, 1895, 28 Stat. 963 (prohibiting the transportation in interstate or foreign commerce, and the mailing of, tickets and advertisements for lotteries and similar enterprises); Act of Mar. 2, 1827, § 6, 4 Stat. 238 (restricting the participation of postmasters and assistant postmasters in the lottery business); Act of July 27, 1868, § 13, 15 Stat. 196 (prohibiting the mailing of any letters or circulars concerning lotteries or similar enterprises); Act of July 12, 1876, § 2, 19 Stat. 90 (repealing an 1872 limitation of the mails prohibition to letters and circulars concerning "illegal" lotteries); Anti-Lottery Act of 1890, § 1, 26 Stat. 465 (extending the mails prohibition to newspapers containing advertisements or prize lists for lotteries or gift enterprises).

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