Cite as: 535 U. S. 425 (2002)
Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment
is imprecise. Second, in my view, the plurality's application of Renton might constitute a subtle expansion, with which I do not concur.
I
In Renton, the Court determined that while the material inside adult bookstores and movie theaters is speech, the consequent sordidness outside is not. The challenge is to correct the latter while leaving the former, as far as possible, untouched. If a city can decrease the crime and blight associated with certain speech by the traditional exercise of its zoning power, and at the same time leave the quantity and accessibility of the speech substantially undiminished, there is no First Amendment objection. This is so even if the measure identifies the problem outside by reference to the speech inside—that is, even if the measure is in that sense content based.
On the other hand, a city may not regulate the secondary effects of speech by suppressing the speech itself. A city may not, for example, impose a content-based fee or tax. See Arkansas Writers' Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U. S. 221, 230 (1987) ("[O]fficial scrutiny of the content of publications as the basis for imposing a tax is entirely incompatible with the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press"). This is true even if the government purports to justify the fee by reference to secondary effects. See Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U. S. 123, 134-135 (1992). Though the inference may be inexorable that a city could reduce secondary effects by reducing speech, this is not a permissible strategy. The purpose and effect of a zoning ordinance must be to reduce secondary effects and not to reduce speech.
A zoning measure can be consistent with the First Amendment if it is likely to cause a significant decrease in secondary effects and a trivial decrease in the quantity of speech. It is well documented that multiple adult businesses in close proximity may change the character of a neighborhood
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