426
Breyer, J., dissenting
and Breyer, JJ., concurring in judgment) ("[T]he university fee at issue is a tax"). And the "government, as a general rule, may support valid programs and policies by taxes or other exactions binding on protesting parties." Id., at 229 (majority opinion). Cf. Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Wash., 461 U. S. 540, 547 (1983) ("Legislatures have especially broad latitude in creating classifications and distinctions in tax statutes").
Second, this program furthers, rather than hinders, the basic First Amendment "commercial speech" objective. The speech at issue amounts to ordinary product promotion within the commercial marketplace—an arena typically characterized both by the need for a degree of public supervision and the absence of a special democratic need to protect the channels of public debate, i. e., the communicative process itself. Cf. Post, supra, at 14-15. No one here claims that the mushroom producers are restrained from contributing to a public debate, moving public opinion, writing literature, creating art, invoking the processes of democratic self-government, or doing anything else more central to the First Amendment's concern with democratic self-government.
When purely commercial speech is at issue, the Court has described the First Amendment's basic objective as protection of the consumer's interest in the free flow of truthful commercial information. See, e. g., Edenfield v. Fane, 507 U. S. 761, 766 (1993) ("First Amendment coverage of commercial speech is designed to safeguard" society's "interes[t] in broad access to complete and accurate commercial information"); Zauderer, supra, at 651 ("[T]he extension of First Amendment protection to commercial speech is justified principally by the value to consumers of the information"); Central Hudson, supra, at 563 ("The First Amend-ment's concern for commercial speech is based on the informational function of advertising"); First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 783 (1978) ("A commercial advertisement is constitutionally protected not so much
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