Cite as: 538 U. S. 343 (2003)
Opinion of Souter, J.
ing any circumstances suggesting intimidation are present. The provision, apparently so unnecessary to legitimate prosecution of intimidation, is therefore quite enough to raise the question whether Virginia's content-based statute seeks more than mere protection against a virulent form of intimidation. It consequently bars any conclusion that an exception to the general rule of R. A. V. is warranted on the ground "that there is no realistic [or little realistic] possibility that official suppression of ideas is afoot," 505 U. S., at 390.2 Since no R. A. V. exception can save the statute as content based, it can only survive if narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest, id., at 395-396, a stringent test the statute cannot pass; a content-neutral statute banning intimidation would achieve the same object without singling out particular content.
IV
I conclude that the statute under which all three of the respondents were prosecuted violates the First Amendment, since the statute's content-based distinction was invalid at the time of the charged activities, regardless of whether the prima facie evidence provision was given any effect in any respondent's individual case. In my view, severance of the prima facie evidence provision now could not eliminate the unconstitutionality of the whole statute at the time of the respondents' conduct. I would therefore affirm the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia vacating the respondents' convictions and dismissing the indictments. Accordingly, I concur in the Court's judgment as to respondent Black and dissent as to respondents Elliott and O'Mara.
2 The same conclusion also goes for the second R. A. V. exception relating to " 'secondary effects.' " 505 U. S., at 389 (citing Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U. S. 41, 48 (1986)). Our "secondary effects" jurisprudence presupposes that the regulation at issue is "unrelated to the suppression of free expression." Ibid.
387
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