COMMERCIAL SPEECH CENTRAL HUDSON TEST FREE

Next, the Court overturned a conviction under a state statute that made it illegal, by sale or circulation of any publication, to encourage or prompt the procuring of an abortion. But the Justice also noted that employment discrimination, which was facilitated by the advertisements, was itself illegal. 4 Suggesting that speech does not lose its constitutional protection simply because it appears in a commercial context, Justice Powell, for the Court, did find the placing of want-ads in newspapers to be classic examples of commercial speech, devoid of expressions of opinions with respect to issues of social policy so the did no more than propose a commercial transaction. Applying the doctrine in a narrow five-to-four decision, the Court sustained the application of a city's ban on employment discrimination to bar sex-designated employment advertising in a newspaper. 3 The change to its earlier holdings was accomplished within a brief span of time in which the Justices haltingly but then decisively moved to a new position.

The Court later modified this position so that commercial speech is protected from unwarranted governmental regulation, although its nature makes it subject to greater limitations than may be imposed on expression not solely related to the economic interests of the speaker and its audience. 2 The doctrine lasted in this form for more than twenty years. The doctrine was in any event limited to promotion of commercial activities the fact that expression was disseminated for profit or through commercial channels did not expose it to any greater regulation than if it were offered for free. 1 In Chrestensen, the Court upheld a city ordinance prohibiting distribution on the street of commercial and business advertising matter, as applied to an exhibitor of a submarine who distributed leaflets describing his submarine on one side and on the other side protesting the city's refusal of certain docking facilities. The conclusion that a communication proposing a commercial transaction is a different order of speech underserving of First Amendment protection was arrived at almost casually in 1942 in Valentine v. Starting in the 1970s, the Court's treatment of commercial speech underwent a transformation from total nonprotection under the First Amendment to qualified protection.

United States Library of Congress, The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation

COMMERCIAL SPEECH CENTRAL HUDSON TEST FREE

& nbsp What Free Speech Rights Do Corporations Have? ' Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech,' But as more and more cases involving commercial speech were analyzed, the Court concluded that there was some social value to commercial speech that warrants First Amendment protection. Until the 1970s, the Supreme Court denied First Amendment free speech protections for commercial actors. Freedom of speech for corporations, also known as “commercial speech,' is a relatively new concept in Constitutional law.

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