E-mail:
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Bruce Ackerman bruce.ackerman at yale.edu
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Mary Dudziak mary.l.dudziak at emory.edu
Joey Fishkin joey.fishkin at gmail.com
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Abbe Gluck abbe.gluck at yale.edu
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Nate Persily npersily at gmail.com
Michael Stokes Paulsen michaelstokespaulsen at gmail.com
Deborah Pearlstein dpearlst at yu.edu
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Richard Primus raprimus at umich.edu
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Alice Ristroph alice.ristroph at shu.edu
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Nelson Tebbe nelson.tebbe at brooklaw.edu
Mark Tushnet mtushnet at law.harvard.edu
Adam Winkler winkler at ucla.edu
The fundamental reason why First Amendment restricts the
government’s ability to compel speech is because compelling a person to
communicate against her will violates her autonomy. This harm to personal
integrity is even more injurious where the speaker disagrees with the message
she is being forced to communicate. For this reason, little attention has been
paid to the harms that some forms of compelled speech inflict on listeners.
My recent research deals with the First Amendment implications
of the FDA’s recently withdrawn graphic tobacco labeling requirements, as well
as state “display and describe” ultrasound laws as part of the abortion
informed consent process. Both sets of laws have been criticized for relying on
emotionally-triggering graphic imagery to persuade audiences that may not wish
to receive these messages, and who (in the case of pre-abortion ultrasounds)
may suffer psychological harm as a result of viewing them. In my symposium
remarks, I argue that concerns about the emotional impact of the tobacco and
ultrasound images on viewers may indeed be relevant to the First Amendment
claims against compelled speech.
PICTURE ONE
PICTURE TWO
First, evidence about emotional impact may be relevant to
determining whether a law is narrowly tailored (per strict scrutiny) or
advances a government interest in the least extensive way possible (per Central
Hudson). As recognized by the Middle District of North Carolina in Stuart
v. Loomis, recognition that unwanted ultrasound images may cause some women
serious psychological harm requires consideration of whether there may be a
different way to deliver the same message with a lower risk of harm.
A second possibility is to query whether laws compelling
display of emotionally-triggering graphic images constitute truthful and not
misleading (per Central Hudson and Casey), and uncontroversial
(per Zauderer) speech. The U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in RJ Reynolds v. FDA, for
example, found that the images selected by the FDA were not “purely factual and
uncontroversial” under Zauderer because they were “inflammatory” and “unabashed
attempts to evoke emotion” (precisely the reason the FDA selected them).
A final, perhaps less obvious, possibility is to
incorporate these concerns about emotional impact by relying on the captive
audience doctrine. This doctrine permits the state, under certain circumstances,
to protect unwilling listeners from messages communicated in ways that make
them hard to avoid (the sound of protesters outside abortion clinics,
unavoidable intrusions into the home, etc.). The Supreme Court in Cohen v.
California gave short shrift to the idea that the captive audience doctrine
might be used to protect viewers in a public space who are exposed to images
they deem offensive (Cohen’s “Fuck the Draft” jacket). However, modern
scientific research about the effect of graphic images on human decisionmaking
suggests that perhaps “averting one’s eyes” in the way the Court suggests does
not actually protect the “non-viewer” from the image’s instantaneous and
unavoidable imprint onto the brain. As far as I am aware, none of the parties
in the tobacco or ultrasound cases made such an argument, but I don’t see why
it couldn’t be presented with sufficient scientific support, particularly in
the ultrasound cases, where the unwanted communication takes place in the
privacy of a physician’s office.
Nadia N. Sawicki is Associate Professor, Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy, Loyola University Chicago School of Law. You can reach her by e-mail at nsawicki at luc.edu Posted
9:30 AM
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