1/4/2021 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly against a whole class of speech, which is political speech. Whether individuals may exercise their free speech rights during the 30-day voting period overseas depends entirely on whether their speech is related to a political campaign.[22] The regulations do not reach other categories of speech, such as commercial solicitation, distribution, and display.[23] Section 36.8 of RA 9189, as amended by RA 10590, and Section 74(II) (8) of Comelec Resolution No. 10035 thus "[slip] from the neutrality of time, place, and circumstance into a concern about content."[24] Again, following Ward, Section 36.8 of RA 9189, as amended by RA 10590, and Section 74(1I)(8) of Comelec Resolution No. 10035 may not have been adopted by the Government because of disagreement with the message the speech conveys. Nevertheless, following Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona,[25] these regulations cannot be justified without reference to their content as regulated speech. Regulations that appear content-neutral will be treated as content-based because they are, in essence, related to the suppression of expression. Moreover, the United States (US) Supreme Court in Reed cautioned that Ward involved a facially content-neutral restriction on the use, in a city owned music venue, of sound amplification systems not provided by the city. It was in that context that the US Supreme Court then looked to governmental motive, including whether the Government had regulated speech because of its disagreement with its message, and whether the regulation was justified without reference to the content of the speech. The US Supreme Court stressed that Ward's framework applies only if a statute is content-neutral. Thus, Reed declared that the crucial first step in the content-neutrality analysis is to determine whether the law is content-neutral on its face. The mere assertion of a content-neutral purpose is not enough to save a law which, on its face, discriminates based on content.[26] A law that is content-based on its face will be treated as such regardless of the Government's benign motive, content-neutral justification, or lack of animus toward the ideas contained in the regulated speech.[27] Citing the dissent of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia in Hill v. Colorado,[28] Reed acknowledged that innocent motives do not eliminate the danger of censorship presented by a facially content-based statute, as future Government officials may one day wield such statutes to suppress disfavored speech: x x x That is why the First Amendment expressly targets the operation of the laws-i.e., the "abridg[ement] of speech"-rather than merely I the motives of those who enacted them. U.S. Const., Amdt. 1. "'The vice of content-based legislation . . . is not that it is always used for invidious, thought-control purposes, but that it lends itself to use for those purposes.'" x x x[29] Furthermore, the cast of the restriction, whether content-neutral or content-based, determines the test by which the challenged act is assayed with.[30] Content-based laws, which are generally treated as more suspect than content-neutral laws because of judicial concern with discrimination in the regulation of expression,[31] are subject to https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/65669 53/60