Whether Snepp should be overruled because it applied mere 'reasonableness' scrutiny to an agency's prepublication review regime, and failed to require the substantive and procedural safeguards the Court has demanded in all other contexts involving the licensing of speech

QUESTIONS PRESENTED All eighteen U.S. intelligence agencies, including the four that are party to this suit, impose lifetime “prepublication review” obligations on former employees, prohibiting them from writing or speaking publicly without first obtaining the government’s approval. The agencies’ prepublication review regimes have expanded dramatically since this Court decided Snepp v. United States, 444 U.S. 507 (1980) (per curiam), which held, in a cursory footnote, that the First Amendment did not preclude the Central Intelligence Agency from imposing a prepublication review obligation on a former CIA officer. The lower courts, including the Fourth Circuit in this case, have understood Snepp to mean that agencies’ prepublication review regimes are exempt from meaningful scrutiny under the First Amendment. As a result, Petitioners here, and millions of former public servants like them, are subject to an onerous and far-reaching system of prior restraint that lacks the substantive and procedural safeguards that the Court has insisted on in all other contexts involving the licensing of speech. In addition, the public is routinely and unjustifiably denied access to speech that could inform public debate about foreign policy, national security, and war—issues as to which public opinion plays an especially important role in checking government power. i The questions presented are: 1. Whether Snepp should be overruled because it applied mere “reasonableness” scrutiny to an agency’s prepublication review regime, and failed to require the substantive and procedural safeguards the Court has demanded in all other contexts involving the licensing of speech. 2. Alternatively, whether Snepp should be clarified because lower courts, including the Fourth Circuit in this case, have read it to preclude any meaningful scrutiny of prepublication review regimes under the First Amendment. 3. Whether Respondents’ prepublication review regimes, which lack essential substantive and procedural safeguards, are constitutional. ii