Simon and Schuster, Inc v Members of NY State Crime Victims Board - Essay Example

The Board holds the money for the satisfaction of all claims by the victims and creditors of the criminal or accused. The Court held that such a law smacks of First Amendment breach because of state imposition on content-based speech, which parallels the discriminatory tax law declared unconstitutional in Arkansas Writers’ Project Inc v Ragland 481 US 221. Two elements can be gleaned from the SC declaration of First Amendment inconsistency: the singling out of income from the expressive activity, and; the singling out of “works with specified content.” This constitutional defect could have been overcome by compelling state interest, according to the SC, such as compensating victims of crimes or precluding criminals from profiting from their crimes. The disputed law, however, does not further state interest because there is no rationale in limiting its application to income derived from the content-based story of the criminal or accused.  To allow the law entails placing in its ambit a potentially large number of works such as the Confession of St. Augustine where he narrated stealing pears from his neighbor’s yard as an instance of moral weakness.