Whether the court of appeals impermissibly allowed the County to violate Petitioners' First Amendment right 'to remain silent,' as reaffirmed in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 600 U.S. 570 (2023)

QUESTIONS PRESENTED At issue in this case is a local ordinance, Bill 108-21 (“the Ordinance”) enacted by Anne Arundel County, Maryland (“the County”). That Ordinance compelled sellers of firearms and/or ammunition in the County to display in their retail establishments and distribute, with each such sale of a firearm or ammunition, literature created or adopted by the County concerning, inter alia, “suicide prevention” and “conflict resolution.” There is no dispute in this case that the County’s forced display and distribution requirement is content-based, compelled speech and is thus “presumptively unconstitutional.” Nat? Inst. of Fam. & Life Advocs. v. Becerra, 585 U.S. 755, 766 (2018) (“«NIFLA”). Yet, the court of appeals held that the compelled speech mandated by the County’s Ordinance was nonetheless constitutional under Zauderer v. Off. of Disciplinary Couns. of Supreme Ct. of Ohio, 471 U.S. 626, 628 (1985), because, in the court’s view, the literature is merely “purely factual and uncontroversial” “commercial speech” and thus could be compelled under Zauderer. The court of appeals likewise affirmed the district court’s exclusion of Petitioners’ expert testimony that demonstrated that the compelled speech was not “purely factual and uncontroversial” information, holding that this exclusion was within the district court’s discretion. The issues presented are: 1. Whether the court of appeals impermissibly allowed the County to violate Petitioners’ First Amendment right “to remain silent,” as reaffirmed in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 600 U.S. 570 (2023), by holding that the County’s Ordinance compelling retail establishments to display and distribute the County’s literature ll was constitutional under Zauderer, as construed and limited by NIFLA, where there is no dispute that nothing in the compelled literature is “about the terms under which ... services will be available” within the meaning of Zauderer and NIFLA. 2. Whether the court of appeals failed to apply the correct legal standard in holding that the County’s “suicide prevention” and “conflict resolution” literature was “commercial speech,” merely because the Ordinance applied to sales at retail establishments and thus could be compelled under Zauderer’s relaxed scrutiny test without regard to the standard for “commercial speech” set forth in Central Hudson Gas & Elec. Corp. v. Pub. Serv. Comm’n of N.Y., 447 U.S. 557 (1980). 3. Whether the court of appeals erred in holding that the County’s suicide prevention and conflict resolution literature was “purely factual and uncontroversial” under Zauderer, where it is undisputed that the supposed link between suicide and access to firearms set forth in the literature is supported only by a correlation and was disputed by Petitioners’ expert witness as “probably false.” 4. Whether the court of appeals erred under General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 186 (1997), and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), in holding that a district court may exclude otherwise admissible expert witness testimony purely because the trial court disagreed with the expert’s reading of the County’s literature.