Lungren

Opinion by Judge CHOY; Dissent by Judge NOONAN.

Appellants, the Association of National Advertisers, Inc., et al. (Trade Associations), appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment upholding the constitutionality of California Business and Professions Code § 17508.5. Having jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , we affirm.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Section 17508.5 makes it unlawful for a manufacturer or distributor of consumer goods to represent that its products are “ozone friendly”, “biodegradable”, “photode-gradable”, “recyclable” or “recycled” unless their goods meet the statute’s definitions of those terms. See Appendix. In 1990, the California Legislature enacted this statute in the wake of a report on environmental advertising issued by a ten-state task force of state attorneys general (the Task Force). This report summarized the findings of the Task Force from a public meeting it convened in March 1990 to address the potential for abuse raised by the increasing popularity of what the attorneys general characterized as “[gjreen marketing ... the marketing craze of the 1990’s.”

The Task Force found disparities in the usage of these terms by different…

dissenting:

I accept the majority’s conclusion that the speech made criminal by this statute is commercial speech. I follow the doctrine of the Supreme Court that commercial speech is, ordinarily, more subject to state regulation than noncommercial speech. I have no doubt at all that untrue or deceptive advertising can be outlawed. I see no problem in the government prescribing precise labels for what cures our bodies or goes into them, or goes into a gas tank. But I have great difficulty in seeing this statute as anything other than a zealous and unconstitutional intrusion by a state government into an area where technologies are developing, the free play of ideas is important, and the free speech of everyone, including manufacturers and distributors, is essential to the development of a healthy environment. Tested by our Bill of Rights, the statute is defective.

*738 To begin with, several of the definitions imposed on manufacturers and distributors under criminal penalties are unconstitutionally vague. Three definitions have a common deficiency: the use of nature as an intelligible standard in an environment and economy where there is scarcely any “nature” independent of…