Significance: This ruling reaffirmed that obscene materials are not protected by the First Amendment. The ruling also set specific guidelines for judging whether pornographic material was obscene. The guidelines established that the standard for obscenity could be determined by local, not federal, laws.
Background: In Newport Beach, California, a restaurant manager and his mother received in the mail several advertisements for sexually graphic materials. They took offense because they had not ordered these brochures, and they notified the police. Miller, the sender of these materials, was charged with and convicted of violating a California obscenity law. Miller appealed to the California Supreme Court, which upheld his conviction. He then appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that the California law violated his First Amendment rights.
Decision: This case was argued on January 18­19, 1972; reargued on November 7, 1972; and decided on June 21, 1973, by a vote of 5 to 4. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote the majority opinion, which held that material could be judged obscene only if it satisfied three standards: (1) if the average person, applying modern community standards, believed it to be indecent; (2) if the work showed or described sexual activity in an offensive way; and (3) if the work had no redeeming artistic, literary, political, or scientific worth. The first two tests could be decided by local authorities, but the third was to follow a national standard. Justice William Brennan Jr., who wrote the dissenting opinion, held that the regulations on obscenity were too vague to be applied objectively.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “In sum, we (a) reaffirm . . . that obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment; (b) hold that such material can be regulated by the States, subject to . . . specific safeguards . . . , without a showing that the material is ‘utterly without redeeming social value’; and (c) hold that obscenity is to be determined by applying ‘contemporary community standards,’ . . . not national standards.’”
