and not just the new amendment, by showing that the limitations it placed as a whole were content-based distriction. The District Court granted summary judgement for the government asserting that while there was speech discrimination, it met the basis of strict scrutiny serving a compelling government interest, in this case, collecting on debt it was owed. The advocacy groups appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. There, the Fourth Circuit vacated the District Court's ruling and remanded the case for further review. The Fourth agreed in the District Court's concept that there was a rationale to apply the strict scrutiny test for the government-debt speech exemption, but ruled that the District Court's application of the test was incorrect, given the nature of the TCPA was meant to be prohibitive. The Fourth Circuit also found that the amendment was severable from the original TCPA law, and thus invalidated the new amendment. Supreme Court The government petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case, which the Supreme Court certified in January 2020. Oral arguments were heard on May 6, 2020, part of the block of cases that were held via teleconference due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Oral arguments focused on how the strict scrutiny tests should apply to the 2015 amendment, and whether that amendment was severable from the entire TCPA, questions that had been brought up from the Fourth Circuit's decision. The Supreme Court issued its ruling on July 6, 2020. The Court affirmed the Fourth Circuit's decision in that the 2015 amendment, in that its exception for the government-debt clause violated the First Amendment, and because the amendment was severable from the rest of the TCPA, invalidated only that portion of the law. First Amendment challenge The 6–3 decision was complex. Six justices agreed that the government-debt amendment, or the entire TCPA, violated the First Amendment. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the plurality decision, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Kavanaugh agreed with the Fourth Circuit's reasoning that the 2015 amendment was a content-based restriction that should be judged by strict scrutiny, as per Reed v. Town of Gilbert, and that it failed to pass the strict scrutiny test. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in concurrence. She too would invalidate the government-debt amendment, but stated that the amendment failed on intermediate scrutiny, rather than strict scrutiny. Justice Neil Gorsuch would