Samuel Alito on Drugs Supreme Court Justice (nominated by Pres. George W. Bush 2005)

Alcohol ads cannot be banned from school newspapers

The Pitt News is distributed free to the university's 25,000 students, two thirds of whom are old enough to drink alcohol. All the paper's revenues come from advertising, much of it from alcoholic-beverage ads. The law cost the paper $17,000 in one year, which caused the paper to shrink in size and to postpone the purchase of digital cameras and improved computers.

Alito's court opinion held that the law was an impermissible restriction on commercial speech, discouraging a form of speech because of its content. He said there was no reasonable connection between the speech restriction and the Pennsylvania government's asserted reason for it-preventing underage drinking.