188
Opinion of the Court
V
The third part of the Central Hudson test asks whether the speech restriction directly and materially advances the asserted governmental interest. "This burden is not satisfied by mere speculation or conjecture; rather, a governmental body seeking to sustain a restriction on commercial speech must demonstrate that the harms it recites are real and that its restriction will in fact alleviate them to a material degree." Edenfield, 507 U. S., at 770-771. Consequently, "the regulation may not be sustained if it provides only ineffective or remote support for the govern-ment's purpose." Central Hudson, 447 U. S., at 564. We have observed that "this requirement is critical; otherwise, 'a State could with ease restrict commercial speech in the service of other objectives that could not themselves justify a burden on commercial expression.' " Rubin, 514 U. S., at 487, quoting Edenfield, 507 U. S., at 771.
The fourth part of the test complements the direct-advancement inquiry of the third, asking whether the speech restriction is not more extensive than necessary to serve the interests that support it. The Government is not required to employ the least restrictive means conceivable, but it must demonstrate narrow tailoring of the challenged regulation to the asserted interest—"a fit that is not necessarily perfect, but reasonable; that represents not necessarily the single best disposition but one whose scope is in proportion to the interest served." Fox, 492 U. S., at 480 (internal quotation marks omitted); see 44 Liquormart, 517 U. S., at 529, 531 (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment). On the whole, then, the challenged regulation should indicate that its proponent " 'carefully calculated' the costs and benefits associated with the burden on speech imposed by its prohibition." Cincinnati v. Discovery Network, Inc., 507 U. S. 410, 417 (1993), quoting Fox, 492 U. S., at 480.
As applied to petitioners' case, § 1304 cannot satisfy these standards. With regard to the first asserted interest—
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