The US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held Tuesday that a Maryland county regulation requiring firearms dealers to provide suicide prevention literature at the point of sale is constitutional under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.

Anne Arundel County, Maryland, declared suicide a public health crisis and in January 2022 passed an ordinance directing the county’s health department to prepare and distribute suicide prevention literature to “all establishments that sell guns or ammunition.” The ordinance also requires businesses that sell guns and ammunition to distribute the suicide prevention literature “at the point of sale.” The literature includes an eight-page pamphlet entitled “Firearms and Suicide Prevention” and a single-page flyer providing information about Anne Arundel’s resources for “conflict resolution,” including where to obtain a suicide-prevention toolkit.

Four gun dealerships in Anne Arundel County and a gun rights corporation sued to block enforcement of the law, claiming that forcing gun dealerships to distribute suicide prevention literature compels gun dealers to convey the county’s message “relating to gun safety, gun training, suicide prevention, mental health, and conflict resolution” to their customers, in violation of their “First Amendment right ‘not to speak’ on such subjects.”

In March 2023, a lower court granted summary judgement for the county and the gun distributors appealed. The Fourth Circuit affirmed, agreeing with the lower court that, despite compelling speech, the ordinance “compelled commercial speech that was factual and uncontroversial and furthered a government interest” and thus did so in a constitutionally permissible way. The court relied largely on the US Supreme Court’s decision in Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of the Supreme Court of Ohio, which struck down laws restricting attorney advertising. The lower court court compared the compelled speech to warning labels on foods or cigarettes.