Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/273

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Cite as: 502 U. S. 105 (1991)

115

Opinion of the Court

Hill under the contract had to be turned over to the Board to be held in escrow for the victims of Hill’s crimes. The Board ordered Hill to turn over the payments he had already received, and ordered Simon & Schuster to turn over all money payable to Hill at the time or in the future. Simon & Schuster brought suit in August 1987, under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, seeking a declaration that the Son of Sam law violates the First Amendment and an injunction barring the statute’s enforcement. After the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment, the District Court found the statute to be consistent with the First Amendment. 724 F. Supp. 170 (SDNY 1989). A divided Court of Appeals affirmed. Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Fischetti, 916 F. 2d 777 (CA2 1990). Because the Federal Government and most of the States have enacted statutes with similar objectives, see 18 U. S. C. § 3681; Note, Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Fischetti: Can New York’s Son of Sam Law Survive First Amendment Challenge?, 66 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1075, n. 6 (1991) (listing state statutes), the issue is significant and likely to recur. We accordingly granted certiorari, 498 U. S. 1081 (1991), and we now reverse. II A A statute is presumptively inconsistent with the First Amendment if it imposes a financial burden on speakers because of the content of their speech. Leathers v. Medlock, 499 U. S. 439, 447 (1991). As we emphasized in invalidating a content-based magazine tax: “[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.” Arkansas Writers’ Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U. S. 221, 230 (1987). This is a notion so engrained in our First Amendment jurisprudence that last Term we found it so “obvious” as to