MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.

Appellant Kirby is the director of the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, an administrative agency vested by the California Constitution with primary authority for the licensing of the sale of alcoholic beverages in that State, and with the authority to suspend or revoke any such license if it determines that its continuation would be contrary to public welfare or morals. Appellees include holders of various liquor licenses issued by appellant, and dancers at premises operated by such licensees. In 1970 the Department promulgated rules regulating the type of entertainment that might be presented in bars and nightclubs that it licensed. Appellees then brought this action in the United States District Court for the Central District of California...

Concerned with the progression in a few years' time from "topless" dancers to "bottomless" dancers and other forms of "live entertainment" in bars and nightclubs that it licensed, the Department heard a number of witnesses on this subject at public hearings held prior to the promulgation of the rules. The majority opinion of the District Court described the testimony in these words: "Law enforcement agencies, counsel and owners of licensed premises and investigators for the Department testified. The story that unfolded was a sordid one, primarily relating to sexual conduct between dancers and customers. . . ."  References to the transcript of the hearings submitted by the Department to the District Court indicated that in licensed establishments where "topless" and "bottomless" dancers, nude entertainers, and films displaying sexual acts were shown, numerous incidents of legitimate concern to the Department had occurred. Customers were found engaging in oral copulation with women entertainers; customers engaged in public masturbation; and customers placed rolled currency either directly into the vagina of a female entertainer, or on the bar in order that she might pick it up herself. Numerous other forms of contact between the mouths of male customers and the vaginal areas of female performers were reported to have occurred....

At the conclusion of the evidence, the Department promulgated the regulations here challenged, imposing standards as to the type of entertainment that could be presented in bars and nightclubs that it licensed. Those portions of the regulations found to be unconstitutional by the majority of the District Court prohibited the following kinds of conduct on licensed premises: "(a) The performance of acts, or simulated acts, of "sexual intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, bestiality, oral copulation, flagellation or any sexual acts which are prohibited by law; (b) The actual or simulated "touching, caressing or fondling on the breast, buttocks, anus or genitals; (c) The actual or simulated "displaying of the pubic hair, anus, vulva or genitals; and (d) The permitting by a licensee of "any person to remain in or upon the licensed premises who exposes to public view any portion of his or her genitals or anus...."

The state regulations here challenged come to us, not in the context of censoring a dramatic performance in a theater, but rather in a context of licensing bars and nightclubs to sell liquor by the drink. In Seagram & Sons v. Hostetter (1966), this Court said: "Consideration of any state law regulating intoxicating beverages must begin with the Twenty-first Amendment, the second section of which provides that: `The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.'"

While the States, vested as they are with general police power, require no specific grant of authority in the Federal Constitution to legislate with respect to matters traditionally within the scope of the police power, the broad sweep of the Twenty-first Amendment has been recognized as conferring something more than the normal state authority over public health, welfare, and morals. In Hostetter v. Idlewild Liquor Corp.(1964), the Court reaffirmed that by reason of the Twenty-first Amendment "a State is totally unconfined by traditional Commerce Clause limitations when it restricts the importation of intoxicants destined for use, distribution, or consumption within its borders." Still earlier, the Court stated in State Board v. Young's Market Co.(1936): "A classification recognized by the Twenty-first Amendment cannot be deemed forbidden by the Fourteenth."

These decisions did not go so far as to hold or say that the Twenty-first Amendment supersedes all other provisions of the United States Constitution in the area of liquor regulations. In Wisconsin v. Constantineau (1971), the fundamental notice and hearing requirement of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was held applicable to Wisconsin's statute providing for the public posting of names of persons who had engaged in excessive drinking. But the case for upholding state regulation in the area covered by the Twenty-first Amendment is undoubtedly strengthened by that enactment: "Both the Twenty-first Amendment and the Commerce Clause are parts of the same Constitution. Like other provisions of the Constitution, each must be considered in the light of the other, and in the context of the issues and interests at stake in any concrete case...."

A common element in the regulations appears to be the Department's conclusion that the sale of liquor by the drink and lewd or naked dancing and entertainment should not take place in bars and cocktail lounges for which it has licensing responsibility. We do not think it can be said that the Department's conclusion in this respect was an irrational one.

Appellees insist that the same results could have been accomplished by requiring that patrons already well on the way to intoxication be excluded from the licensed premises. But wide latitude as to choice of means to accomplish a permissible end must be accorded to the state agency that is itself the repository of the State's power under the Twenty-first Amendment...

As the mode of expression moves from the printed page to the commission of public acts that may themselves violate valid penal statutes, the scope of permissible state regulations significantly increases. States may sometimes proscribe expression that is directed to the accomplishment of an end that the State has declared to be illegal when such expression consists, in part, of "conduct" or "action."  The substance of the regulations struck down prohibits licensed bars or nightclubs from displaying, either in the form of movies or live entertainment, "performances" that partake more of gross sexuality than of communication. While we agree that at least some of the performances to which these regulations address themselves are within the limits of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression, the critical fact is that California has not forbidden these performances across the board. It has merely proscribed such performances in establishments that it licenses to sell liquor by the drink.

Viewed in this light, we conceive the State's authority in this area to be somewhat broader than did the District Court. This is not to say that all such conduct and performance are without the protection of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. But we would poorly serve both the interests for which the State may validly seek vindication and the interests protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments were we to insist that the sort of bacchanalian revelries that the Department sought to prevent by these liquor regulations were the constitutional equivalent of a performance by a scantily clad ballet troupe in a theater.

The Department's conclusion, embodied in these regulations, that certain sexual performances and the dispensation of liquor by the drink ought not to occur at premises that have licenses was not an irrational one. Given the added presumption in favor of the validity of the state regulation in this area that the Twenty-first Amendment requires, we cannot hold that the regulations on their face violate the Federal Constitution.

MR. JUSTICE STEWART, concurring.

A State has broad power under the Twenty-first Amendment to specify the times, places, and circumstances where liquor may be dispensed within its borders.  I should suppose, therefore, that nobody would question the power of California to prevent the sale of liquor by the drink in places where food is not served, or where dancing is permitted, or where gasoline is sold. But here California has provided that liquor by the drink shall not be sold in places where certain grossly sexual exhibitions are performed; and that action by the State, say the appellees, violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. I cannot agree.

Every State is prohibited by these same Amendments from invading the freedom of the press and from impinging upon the free exercise of religion. But does this mean that a State cannot provide that liquor shall not be sold in bookstores, or within 200 feet of a church? I think not. For the State would not thereby be interfering with the First Amendment activities of the church or the First Amendment business of the bookstore. It would simply be controlling the distribution of liquor, as it has every right to do under the Twenty-first Amendment. On the same premise, I cannot see how the liquor regulations now before us can be held, on their face, to violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, dissenting....

MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, dissenting.

I dissent....Nothing in the language or history of the Twenty-first Amendment authorizes the States to use their liquor licensing power as a means for the deliberate inhibition of protected, even if distasteful, forms of expression.

MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, dissenting.

In my opinion, the District Court's judgment should be affirmed. The record in this case is not a pretty one, and it is possible that the State could constitutionally punish some of the activities described therein under a narrowly drawn scheme. But appellees challenge these regulations on their face, rather than as applied to a specific course of conduct. When so viewed, I think it clear that the regulations are overbroad and therefore unconstitutional....

It should thus be evident that, under the standards previously developed by this Court, the California regulations are overboard: They would seem to suppress not only obscenity outside the scope of the First Amendment, but also speech that is clearly protected. But California contends that these regulations do not involve suppression at all. The State claims that its rules are not regulations of obscenity, but are rather merely regulations of the sale and consumption of liquor. Appellants point out that California does not punish establishments which provide the proscribed entertainment, but only requires that they not serve alcoholic beverages on their premises. Appellants vigorously argue that such regulation falls within the State's general police power as augmented, when alcoholic beverages are involved, by the Twenty-first Amendment.

I must confess that I find this argument difficult to grasp. To some extent, it seems premised on the notion that the Twenty-first Amendment authorizes the States to regulate liquor in a fashion which would otherwise be constitutionally impermissible. But the Amendment by its terms speaks only to state control of the importation of alcohol, and its legislative history makes clear that it was intended only to permit "dry" States to control the flow of liquor across their boundaries despite potential Commerce Clause objections. There is not a word in that history which indicates that Congress meant to tamper in any way with First Amendment rights. I submit that the framers of the Amendment would be astonished to discover that they had inadvertently enacted a protanto repealer of the rest of the Constitution....

To be sure, state regulation of liquor is important, and it is deeply embedded in our history. But First Amendment values are important as well. Indeed, in the past they have been thought so important as to provide an independent restraint on every power of Government.... "