THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 21, 1996 TAG: 9605210011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
Little by little, over 20 years and a variety of cases, an increasingly conservative Supreme Court has been extending free-speech protection to commercial speech. Recently, it took another step in that direction.
A distinction has long been made between political and commercial speech. Courts said the Constitution gave far greater protection to political speech than mere advertising. Government had to make a really compelling case to gag political talk but could impinge in many ways on the speech of the marketplace.
Slowly, the distinction is being erased. In the latest case, Rhode Island banned so-called price-and-item advertising for alcohol. That is, the vendor could not advertise to potential customers the prices he was charging for products.
A unanimous Supreme Court said that was an unacceptable limitation on speech. Some attempts to limit cigarette advertising could also be affected by the decision. Those who worry about the dangers of tobacco and alcohol may feel the court is off base. But the issue is not whether tobacco and alcohol are good for you but whether too much government control of speech can be bad for commerce, society and the citizen's ability to make informed choices.
To their credit, the justices chose the rights of the individual over the power of the state. The Bill of Rights, after all, is not about how much freedom Americans are allowed to have but about how much freedom government is allowed to take away.
In the ruling for the court, Justice John Paul Stevens said there's very little justification for a government trying to prohibit entirely ``the dissemination of truthful, non-misleading commercial messages. . . .''
Justice Clarence Thomas in a concurrence said he would have gone even further to limit government because he believes that under the Constitution ``all attempts to dissuade legal choices by citizens by keeping them ignorant are impermissible.''
It is clear that government has the right to regulate speech by marketers that misrepresents products or poses a danger to the users. Touting lies in a crowded bazaar is akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater.
But the court is correct to tell government to stop playing the nanny when its strictures do nothing more than deprive citizens of factual information about legal products that can help them make their own buying decisions. by CNB