The U.S. Supreme Court case Arkansas Writers' Project, Inc. v. Ragland, Commissioner of Revenue of Arkansas (1986) involved a challenge to an Arkansas law that taxed general interest magazines but exempted religious, professional, trade and sports journals from the tax. The plaintiff was the publisher of a general interest magazine who argued that this selective taxation violated their First Amendment rights by discriminating based on content. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff with Justice William Brennan writing for the majority opinion stating that such differential taxation ran afoul of press freedom as it could potentially influence or control content and thus constituted discrimination against certain types of speech which is prohibited under First Amendment protections.

In the dissenting opinion for Arkansas Writers' Project, Inc. v. Ragland, Justice White argued that the majority's decision was a misinterpretation of the First Amendment and its application to tax laws. He contended that there is no constitutional requirement for states to maintain viewpoint neutrality in their taxation policies and disagreed with the notion that differential taxation constitutes censorship or suppression of speech. Furthermore, he asserted that any burden on free expression resulting from this sales tax was incidental rather than intentional - an important distinction when considering constitutionality under First Amendment jurisprudence. In his view, striking down such a common form of state revenue generation could have far-reaching implications beyond just magazine publishers.