Parties: Leathers v. Medlock
Date: 1991-04-16
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Paragraph: 32 - N106* This Court has long recognized that the freedom of the press prohibits government from using the tax power to discriminate against individual members of the media or against the media as a whole. See Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233, 56 S.Ct. 444, 80 L.Ed. 660 (1936); Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Comm'r of Revenue, 460 U.S. 575, 103 S.Ct. 1365, 75 L.Ed.2d 295 (1983); Arkansas Writers' Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U.S. 221, 107 S.Ct. 1722, 95 L.Ed.2d 209 (1987). The Framers of the First Amendment, we have explained, specifically intended to prevent government from using disparate tax burdens to impair the untrammeled dissemination of information. We granted certiorari in this case to consider whether the obligation not to discriminate against individual members of the press prohibits the State from taxing one information medium—cable television—more heavily than others. The majority's answer to this question—that the State is free to discriminate between otherwise like-situated media so long as the more heavily taxed medium is not too "small" in number—is no answer at all, for it fails to explain which media actors are entitled to equal tax treatment. Indeed, the majority so adamantly proclaims the irrelevance of this problem that its analysis calls into question whether any general obligation to treat media actors even-handedly survives today's decision. Because I believe the majority has unwisely cut back on the principles that inform our selective-taxation precedents, and because I believe that the First Amendment prohibits the State from singling out a particular information medium for heavier tax burdens than are borne by like-situated media, I dissent.
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Paragraph: 35 - our decisions have recognized that the Framers viewed selective taxation as a distinctively potent "means of abridging the freedom of the press,"
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Paragraph: 54 - "[T]he Free Press guarantee is, in essence, a structural provision of the Constitution. Most of the other provisions in the Bill of Rights protect specific liberties or specific rights of individuals: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, the right to counsel, the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, to name a few. In contrast, the Free Press Clause extends protection to an institution."
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Paragraph: 18 - The danger from a tax scheme that targets a small number of speakers is the danger of censorship; a tax on a small number of speakers runs the risk of affecting only a limited range of views. The risk is similar to that from content-based regulation: It will distort the market for ideas. N195* "The constitutional right of free expression is . . . intended to remove governmental restraints from the arena of public discussion, putting the decision as to what views shall be voiced largely into the hands of each of us . . . in the belief that no other approach would comport with the premise of individual dignity and choice upon which our political system rests."
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Paragraph: 8 - N97* cable television provides to its subscribers news, information, and entertainment. It is engaged in "speech" under the First Amendment, and is, in much of its operation, part of the "press."
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Paragraph: 9 - The Court discussed at length the pre-First Amendment English and American tradition of taxes imposed exclusively on the press. This invidious form of censorship was intended to curtail the circulation of newspapers and thereby prevent the people from acquiring knowledge of government activities.
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Paragraph: 18 - The danger from a tax scheme that targets a small number of speakers is the danger of censorship; a tax on a small number of speakers runs the risk of affecting only a limited range of views. The risk is similar to that from content-based regulation: It will distort the market for ideas.
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Phrase match: the danger of censorship; a tax on
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