Chiles v. Salazar · ¶47

The fact that the State's viewpoint regulation targets only licensed healthcare professionals like Ms. Chiles changes nothing. Colorado and the dissent may believe that the First Amendment should carry “far less salience” for the Nation's millions of “medical professionals” than for everyone else. Post, at 646 (opinion of Jackson, J.); post, at 674–683; Brief for Respondents 23. They may believe that state-imposed orthodoxies in speech pose few dangers and many benefits in this field (and who knows what others). But their policy is not the First Amendment's. The Constitution does not protect the right of some to speak freely; it protects the right of all. It safeguards not only popular ideas; it secures, even and especially, the right to voice dissenting views. Consistent with these principles, our precedents have expressly rejected the State and dissent's notion that “professional…

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