Assoc. Dean Amar Comments on Supreme Court Decision for Nevada Public Radio
Associate Dean Vikram Amar commented on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision not to review a lower court ruling in Coyote Publishing v. Masto for a news report on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR. The Court let stand the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's decision allowing the state to ban the advertising of brothels in Nevada counties where prostitution is illegal.
Although Nevada has chosen not to have laws against prostitution in most of the state's counties, the Court ruled that state has an interest in avoiding the "overt commodification" of sex, Amar explained. Given the unique nature of prostitution and that Nevada is alone among American states in allowing it at all, the Court felt the state was within rights to regulate advertising, he said.
Amar also noted that "Historically, commercial speech has not been as completely protected as, say, political advocacy. Over the past 20 years or so, the Supreme Court has tended to elevate commercial speech so that it gets almost as much protection as political speech, but the cases still draw this big distinction, and that's the distinction the Ninth Circuit exploited in saying that Nevada had leeway here."
Vikram Amar, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Law with the UC Davis School of Law, is a national authority in the fields of constitutional law, civil procedure, criminal procedure, and remedies. His biweekly column for FindLaw.com, a leading provider of online legal information, centers on his expertise in constitutional law.