What is the impact of the California Communications Act on First Amendment rights?

Grosjean v. American Press Co., supra (1936) 297 U.S. 233, 56 S.Ct. 444, 80 L.Ed. 660, likewise lends support to the views we have expressed with respect to the Act. In Grosjean a statute which imposed a 2 per cent tax upon the gross receipts of newspapers making a 'charge' for advertising and having a circulation of over 20,000 copies per week, was held to be an unconstitutional impairment of First Amendment rights. The court reasoned that the statute was 'a deliberate and calculated device in the guise of a tax' which had the effect of curtailing revenue and of restricting circulation, and thus of limiting 'the circulation of information to which the public is entitled in virtue of the constitutional guaranties.' (Pp. 244-245, 250, of 297 U.S. p. 449 of 56 S.Ct.) Further, states the opinion, 'It is not intended by anything we have said to suggest that the owners of newspapers are immune from any of the ordinary forms of taxation for support of the government. But this is not an ordinary form of tax, but one single in kind, with a long history of hostile misuse against the freedom of the press. * * * The tax here involved is bad not because it takes money from the pockets of the appellees' but because of its effect of restricting the dissemination of information to the public. ¹⁴ The Act before this court in the present case would not only curtail revenues, as in Grosjean, but would utterly prohibit collecting them from home subscribers; it thus constitutes a complete ban on the establishment of a home subscription television system in California, and, consequently, on the disseminating of speech, ideas, and entertainment over such a system. As already stated, a suppression so sweeping in its scope can be sustained only to prevent a 'clear and present danger' that there would otherwise be brought about 'substantive evils' against which the state has a right to protect. No such 'danger' or 'evils' are shown here.