424
Breyer, J., dissenting
we found Barnette and Wooley, and all of "our compelled speech case law . . . clearly inapplicable" to compelled financial support of generic advertising. 521 U. S., at 470. See also Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio, 471 U. S. 626, 651 (1985) (refusing to apply Wooley and Barnette in a commercial context where "the interests at stake in this case are not of the same order"). We explained:
"The use of assessments to pay for advertising does not require respondents to repeat an objectionable message out of their own mouths, cf. West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 632 (1943), require them to use their own property to convey an antagonistic ideological message, cf. Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705 (1977); Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. v. Public Util. Comm'n of Cal., 475 U. S. 1, 18 (1986) (plurality opinion), force them to respond to a hostile message when they 'would prefer to remain silent,' see ibid., or require them to be publicly identified or associated with another's message, cf. PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U. S. 74, 88 (1980). Respondents are . . . merely required to make contributions for advertising." Wile-man, supra, at 470-471.
These statements are no less applicable to the present case. How can the Court today base its holding on Barnette, Wooley, Abood, and Keller—the very same cases that we expressly distinguished in Wileman?
II
Nearly every human action that the law affects, and virtually all governmental activity, involves speech. For First Amendment purposes this Court has distinguished among contexts in which speech activity might arise, applying special speech-protective rules and presumptions in some of those areas, but not in others. See, e. g., Board of Regents
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