Most of the suppressive laws in England became common after the introduction of the printing press in 1450 when the British government and the Catholic Church were bent on controlling the press in England using their licensing power. The reason for controlling the press was to prevent the people from publicly criticizing the government and the church, in a way limiting their freedom of speech. Consequently, to prevent similar occurrences in America, a few loyal American citizens formulated the First Amendment after America became independent of Britain to prevent the U.S government from using some of the suppressive laws used by the British government. As a result, the First Amendment of America's constitution states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances (Ross et al., 2019)." 

In 1942, the U.S Supreme Court exempted advertising or “commercial speech” from protection by the First Amendment. This happened when the Supreme Court independently created the “first commercial speech doctrine (Bruce Johnson, 2002)” under the 1942 Valentine vs Chrestensen decision. Weeks after Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, the Court announced several speech categories that were not a threat to the constitution; thus, they did not need protection by the First Amendment. The categories listed by the Court were "the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words, (Bruce Johnson, 2002)" and soon, Valentine added the commercial speech. The Valentine case resulted from his disagreement with Chrestensen, who issued handbills about his business that contributed to littering the environment. Accordingly, New York City passed on a law to ban advertising on city streets. 

However, the idea proved unsustainable, prompting the Court to change its previous ideas in 1976. As a result, the court cases revolving around commercial speech drove the Supreme Court to decide that the government under the First Amendment protects any commercial speech that is not misleading or false. In the 1976 court case of Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, the Court tore down a statute that was against pharmacists advertising their prices. This was the first step in recognizing advertising as a category that needs to be protected by the First Amendment. Despite its reluctance to include advertising as one of the things protected by the First Amendment, the Court had no choice but to do so, backed by Justice Harry Blackmun. Blackmun stated that the attempts made by states to limit commercial speech were irrational and that people received better services and needs if they were adequately informed, which would only be made possible by allowing accessible communication.

Since 1976, the Court has continued to receive advertising-related issues, prompting it to look into the matter more introspectively. Accordingly, the Court started recognizing the importance of including advertising as one of the speech categories that need protection by the First Amendment. However, some forms of commercial speech were provocative and threatening to healthy lifestyles, like contraceptives and tobacco commercials, and this caused a dilemma for the Court on whether to limit commercial speech or not. By 2002, the protection of commercial speech by the government was established. The process of pushing the Court to recognize commercial speech or advertising as one of the speech categories to be protected by the First Amendment was not smooth. To this day, especially with the changes in the press, the Court and constitution still struggle to handle cases related to advertising, questioning whether the current cases presented to courts about commercial speech are a violation of the First Amendment or not.