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529US3

Unit: $U60

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UNITED STATES v. PLAYBOY ENTERTAINMENT
GROUP, INC.
Thomas, J., concurring

tion of the United States shall be ﬁned under title 18 or im-
prisoned not more than 2 years, or both”).*

However, as the Court points out, this case has been liti-
gated on the assumption that the programming at issue is
not obscene, but merely indecent. We have no factual ﬁnd-
ing that any of the materials at issue are, in fact, obscene.
Indeed, the District Court described the materials as inde-
cent but not obscene. 945 F. Supp. 772, 774, n. 4 (Del. 1996).
The Government does not challenge that characterization in
this Court, Tr. of Oral Arg. 9–10, but instead asks this Court
to ratify the statute on the assumption that this is protected
speech.
I am unwilling, in the absence of factual ﬁndings or
advocacy of the position, to rely on the view that some of the
relevant programming is obscene.

What remains then is the assumption that the program-
ming restricted by § 505 is not obscene, but merely indecent.
The Government, having declined to defend the statute as a
regulation of obscenity, now asks us to dilute our stringent
First Amendment standards to uphold § 505 as a proper reg-
ulation of protected (rather than unprotected) speech. See
Brief for Appellants 18–29 (arguing that traditional strict
scrutiny does not apply).
I am unwilling to corrupt the
First Amendment to reach this result. The “starch” in our
constitutional standards cannot be sacriﬁced to accommodate
the enforcement choices of the Government. See Denver
Area Ed. Telecommunications Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, 518
U. S. 727, 774 (1996) (Souter, J., concurring) (“Reviewing

*I am referring, here, to unscrambled programming on the Playboy and
Spice channels, examples of which were lodged with the Court. The Gov-
ernment also lodged videotapes containing signal bleed from these chan-
nels.
I assume that if the unscrambled programming on these channels
is obscene, any scrambled but discernible images from the programs would
In fact, some of the examples of signal bleed con-
be obscene as well.
tained in the record may fall within our deﬁnition of obscenity more easily
than would the unscrambled programming because it is difﬁcult to dispute
that signal bleed “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientiﬁc
value.” Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15, 24 (1973).