Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/278

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SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC. v. MEMBERS OF N. Y. STATE CRIME VICTIMS BD. Opinion of the Court

any other activity in connection with its interest in transferring the fruits of crime from criminals to their victims. Thus even if the State can be said to have an interest in classifying a criminal’s assets in this manner, that interest is hardly compelling. We have rejected similar assertions of a compelling interest in the past. In Arkansas Writers’ Project and Minneapolis Star, we observed that while the State certainly has an important interest in raising revenue through taxation, that interest hardly justified selective taxation of the press, as it was completely unrelated to a press/nonpress distinction. Arkansas Writers’ Project, supra, at 231; Minneapolis Star, 460 U. S., at 586. Likewise, in Carey v. Brown, 447 U. S. 455, 467–469 (1980), we recognized the State’s interest in preserving privacy by prohibiting residential picketing, but refused to permit the State to ban only nonlabor picketing. This was because “nothing in the content-based labornonlabor distinction has any bearing whatsoever on privacy.” Id., at 465. Much the same is true here. The distinction drawn by the Son of Sam law has nothing to do with the State’s interest in transferring the proceeds of crime from criminals to their victims. Like the government entities in the above cases, the Board has taken the effect of the statute and posited that effect as the State’s interest. If accepted, this sort of circular defense can sidestep judicial review of almost any statute, because it makes all statutes look narrowly tailored. As Judge Newman pointed out in his dissent from the opinion of the Court of Appeals, such an argument “eliminates the entire inquiry concerning the validity of content-based discriminations. Every content-based discrimination could be upheld by simply observing that the state is anxious to regulate the designated category of speech.” 916 F. 2d, at 785. In short, the State has a compelling interest in compensating victims from the fruits of the crime, but little if any interest in limiting such compensation to the proceeds of the