"It is not too early to identify the sleeper case of the last Supreme Court term."

"In an otherwise minor decision about a municipal sign ordinance, the court in June transformed the First Amendment."

Though just two months old, [Reed v. Town of Gilbert] has already required lower courts to strike down laws barring panhandling, automated phone calls and “ballot selfies.”

The ordinance in the Reed case discriminated against signs announcing church services in favor of ones promoting political candidates....

The key move in Justice Thomas’s opinion was the vast expansion of what counts as content-based [and thus subject to strict scrutiny]. The court used to say laws were content-based if they were adopted to suppress speech with which the government disagreed.

Justice Thomas took a different approach. Any law that singles out a topic for regulation, he said, discriminates based on content and is therefore presumptively unconstitutional.

Securities regulation is a topic. Drug labeling is a topic. Consumer protection is a topic....
“The majority opinion in Reed effectively abolishes any distinction between content regulation and subject-matter regulation,” Judge Easterbrook wrote [in a recent 7th Circuit case]. “Any law distinguishing one kind of speech from another by reference to its meaning now requires a compelling justification.”...

Last week, a federal judge in New Hampshire relied on Reed to strike down a law that made it illegal to take a picture of a completed election ballot and show it to others, including on social media. The law was meant to combat vote buying and coercion, which were common before the adoption of the secret ballot.

“As in Reed,” Judge Paul Barbadoro wrote, “the law under review is content-based on its face because it restricts speech on the basis of its subject matter.”