Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, 533 U.S. 525, 56 (2001)

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580

LORILLARD TOBACCO CO. v. REILLY

Opinion of Thomas, J.

rectly addressed to minors. 940 Code of Mass. Regs. § 21.03 (2000). On respondents' theory, all tobacco advertising may be limited because some of its viewers may not legally act on it.

It is difficult to see any stopping point to a rule that would allow a State to prohibit all speech in favor of an activity in which it is illegal for minors to engage. Presumably, the State could ban car advertisements in an effort to enforce its restrictions on underage driving. It could regulate advertisements urging people to vote, because children are not permitted to vote. And, although the Solicitor General resisted this implication of her theory, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 55- 56, the State could prohibit advertisements for adult businesses, which children are forbidden to patronize.

At bottom, respondents' theory rests on the premise that an indirect solicitation is enough to empower the State to regulate speech, and that, as petitioners put it, even an advertisement directed at adults "will give any children who may happen to see it the wrong idea and therefore must be suppressed from public view." Brief for Petitioners Loril-lard Tobacco Co. et al. in No. 00-596, p. 36. This view is foreign to the First Amendment. "Every idea is an incitement," Gitlow v. New York, 268 U. S. 652, 673 (1925) (Holmes, J., dissenting), and if speech may be suppressed whenever it might inspire someone to act unlawfully, then there is no limit to the State's censorial power. Cf. American Booksellers Assn., Inc. v. Hudnut, 771 F. 2d 323 (CA7 1985), aff'd, 475 U. S. 1001 (1986).

There is a deeper flaw in the State's argument. Even if Massachusetts has a valid interest in regulating speech directed at children—who, it argues, may be more easily misled, and to whom the sale of tobacco products is unlawful— it may not pursue that interest at the expense of the free speech rights of adults.

The theory that public debate should be limited in order to protect impressionable children has a long historical pedi-

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