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SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC. v. MEMBERS OF N. Y. STATE CRIME VICTIMS BD. Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment

The employment of the compelling interest test in the present context is in no way justified by my colleagues’ citation of Arkansas Writers’ Project v. Ragland. Ante, at 118. True, both Ragland and the case on which it relied, Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Comm’r of Revenue, 460 U. S. 575 (1983), recite either the compelling interest test or a close variant, see Ragland, supra, at 231; Minneapolis Star, supra, at 585, but neither is a case in which the State regulates speech for its content. There are, of course, other cases, some even predating the slow metamorphosis of Carey v. Brown’s equal protection analysis into First Amendment law, which apply the compelling interest test, but these authorities also address issues other than content censorship. See Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 25 (1976) (upholding content-neutral limitations on financial contributions to campaigns for federal office and striking down content-neutral limitations on financial expenditures for such campaigns); Cousins v. Wigoda, 419 U. S. 477, 489 (1975) (content-neutral restriction on freedom of association); NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 438 (1963) (content-neutral prohibition on solicitation by lawyers); Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 479, 488 (1960) (content-neutral statute compelling teachers in state-supported schools or colleges to disclose all organizations to which they belonged or contributed). The inapplicability of the compelling interest test to content-based restrictions on speech is demonstrated by our repeated statement that “above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.” Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92, 95 (1972). See also Ragland, 481 U. S., at 229– 230 (citing Mosley); Regan v. Time, Inc., 468 U. S. 641, 648–649 (1984) (“Regulations which permit the Government to discriminate on the basis of the content of the message cannot be tolerated under the First Amendment”). These