Central Hudson Gas And Electric Corporation Vs Public Service Commission Case Analysis

Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp v. Public Service Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 557 (1980)

Facts: The state of New York had an electricity shortage during the winter of 1973-1974. The Public Service Commission wanted to remove all advertising that promoted the use of electricity in order to allow the state's electricity to come back, so they imposed a ban that would prohibit the advertisement of electrical usage to be shown and used in commercial. The intent was to limit electrical use and allow the state to solve the issue of the shortage. Gas & Electric Corp. did not agree with the ban, as they were a company who was affected by it since they were banned from commercially advertising electrical products and services, decided to

The Public Service Commission thought that this ban was necessary for solving the problem of the electrical shortage because having less people under the impression that using a lot of electricity is good can prevent the usage of electricity and therefore causing the circuits to regain power and function normally again. Gas and Electric Corp. found that this ban was not only unlawful, however, ruined their business as well by having an unwanted government regulation used against them in favor for something that wasn't directly the company's fault. It is up to the people on how much electricity they use and Gas & Electric Corp. Was only doing their job my promoting and advertising their products and services. The Supreme Court ruled that the ban on electrical advertisements was a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendment and this led to the four-step process of determining how commercial speech should be analyzed and interpreted in

The court reached this decision by using the First and Fourteenth Amendment as rules in place for rights to free commercial speech and for state laws and their rules for creating bans and regulations. The First Amendment was applied to this case as the Gas & Electric Corp. held the right to free commercial speech as the Constitution states that, "Congress shall make no law" that prohibits "freedom of speech". Defining what "speech" is, is significant to the application of the law. In this case, speech was commercial advertisement which is, by definition, a form of speech and that form of speech is protected under the First Amendment since it does not violate the rules of speech that can be protected. Speech that is not protected under the constitution are, "obscenity, fighting words, defamation (including libel and slander), child pornography, perjury, blackmail, incitement to imminent lawless action, true threats" (Newseum Institute). The court saw that the commercial advertisement was not within one of those categories of unprotected speech therefore ruled it as protected, making it illegal to ban or deny the right to Gas & Electric Corp. Another factor in the speech being lawful is that since it is commercial speech, the company providing it must have extensive knowledge of the subject that they are advertising. Gas & Electric Corp. contained