Case Name: TIMES FILM CORP. v. CITY OF CHICAGO et al.
Court: Supreme Court of the United States
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1961-01-23
Citations: 365 U.S. 43
Docket Number: No. 34
Parties: TIMES FILM CORP. v. CITY OF CHICAGO et al.
Judges: with whom Mr. Justice Black, Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Brennan join,
Reporter: United States Reports
Volume: 365
Pages: 43–84

Head Matter:
TIMES FILM CORP. v. CITY OF CHICAGO et al.
No. 34.
Argued October 19-20, 1960.
Decided January 23, 1961.
Felix J. Bilgrey and Abner J. Mikva argued the cause and filed a brief for petitioner.
Robert J. Collins and Sydney R. Drebin argued the cause for respondents. With them on the brief was John C. Melaniphy.

Opinion:
Mr. Justice Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner challenges on constitutional grounds the validity on its face of that portion of § 155-4 of the Municipal Code of the City of Chicago which requires submission of all motion pictures for examination prior to their public exhibition. Petitioner is a New York corporation owning the exclusive right to publicly exhibit in Chicago the film known as "Don Juan." It applied for a permit, as Chicago's ordinance required, and tendered the license fee but refused to submit the film for examination. The appropriate city official refused to issue the permit and his order was made final on appeal to the Mayor. The sole ground for denial was petitioner's refusal to submit the film for examination as required. Petitioner then brought this suit seeking injunctive relief ordering the issuance of the permit without submission of the film and restraining the city officials from interfering with the exhibition of the picture. Its sole ground is that the provision of the ordinance requiring submission of the film constitutes, on its face, a prior restraint within the prohibition of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The District Court dismissed the complaint on the grounds, inter alia, that neither a substantial federal question nor even a justiciable controversy was presented. 180 F. Supp. 843. The Court of Appeals affirmed, finding that the case presented merely an abstract question of law since neither the film nor evidence of its content was submitted. 272 F. 2d 90. The precise question at issue here never hav ing been specifically decided by this Court, we granted certiorari, 362 U. S. 917 (1960).
We are satisfied that a justiciable controversy exists. The section of Chicago's ordinance in controversy specifically provides that a permit for the public exhibition of a motion picture must be obtained; that such "permit shall be granted only after the motion picture film for which said permit is requested has been produced at the office of the commissioner of police for examination"; that the commissioner shall refuse the permit if the picture does not meet certain standards; and that in the event of such refusal the applicant may appeal to the mayor for a de novo hearing and his action shall be final. Violation of the ordinance carries certain punishments. The petitioner complied with the requirements of the ordinance, save for the production of the film for examination. The claim is that this concrete and specific statutory require ment, the production of the film at the office of the Commissioner for examination, is invalid as a previous restraint on freedom of speech. In Joseph Burstyn, Inc., v. Wilson, 343 U. S. 495, 502 (1952), we held that motion pictures are included "within the free speech and free press guaranty of the First and Fourteenth Amendments." Admittedly, the challenged section of the ordinance imposes a previous restraint, and the broad justiciable issue is therefore present as to whether the ambit of constitutional protection includes complete and absolute freedom to exhibit, at least once, any and every kind of motion picture. It is that question alone which we decide. We have concluded that § 155-4 of Chicago's ordinance requiring the submission, of films prior to their public exhibition is not, on the grounds set forth, void on its face.
Petitioner's narrow attack upon the ordinance does not require that any consideration be given to the validity of the standards set out therein. They are not challenged and are not before us. Prior motion picture censorship cases which reached this Court involved questions of standards. The films had all been submitted to the authorities and permits for their exhibition were refused because of their content. Obviously, whether a particular statute is "clearly drawn," or "vague," or "indefinite," or whether a clear standard is in fact met by a film are different questions involving other constitutional challenges to be tested by considerations not here involved.
Moreover, there is not a word in the record as to the nature and content of "Don Juan." We are left entirely in the dark in this regard, as were the city officials and the other reviewing courts. Petitioner claims that the nature of the film is irrelevant, and that even if this film contains the basest type of pornography, or incitement to riot, or forceful overthrow of orderly government, it may nonetheless be shown without prior submission for examination. The challenge here is to the censor's basic authority ; it does not go to any statutory standards employed by the censor or procedural requirements as to the submission of the film.
In this perspective we consider the prior decisions of this Court touching on the problem. Beginning over a third of a century ago in Gitlow v. New York, 268 U. S. 652 (1925), they have consistently reserved for future decision possible situations in which the claimed First Amendment privilege might have to give way to the necessities of the public welfare. It has never been held that liberty- of speech is absolute. Nor has it been suggested that all previous restraints on speech are invalid. On the contrary, in Near v. Minnesota, 283 U. S. 697, 715-716 (1931), Chief Justice Hughes, in discussing the classic legal statements concerning the immunity of the press from censorship, observed that the principle forbidding previous restraint "is stated too broadly, if every such restraint is deemed to be prohibited. . . . [T]he protection even as to previous restraint is not absolutely unlimited. But the limitation has been recognized only in exceptional cases." These included, the Chief Justice found, utterances creating "a hindrance" to the Government's war effort, and "actual obstruction to its recruiting service'or the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops." In addition, the Court said that "the primary requirements of decency may be enforced against obscene publications" and the "security of the community life may be protected against incitements to acts of violence and the overthrow by force of orderly government." Some years later, a unanimous Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Murphy, in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568, 571-572 (1942), held that there were "certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words — those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." Thereafter, as we have mentioned, in Joseph Burstyn, Inc., v. Wilson, supra, we found motion pictures to be within the guarantees of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, but we added that this was "not the end of our problem. It does not follow that the Constitution requires absolute freedom to exhibit every motion picture of every kind at all times and all places." At p. 502. Five years later, in Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 483 (1957), we held that "in light of . . . history, it is apparent that the unconditional phrasing of the First Amendment was not intended to protect every utterance." Even those in dissent there found that "Freedom of expression can be suppressed if, and to the extent that, it is so closely brigaded with illegal action as to be an inseparable part of it." Id., at 514. And, during the same Term, in Kingsley Books, Inc., v. Brown, 354 U. S. 436, 441 (1957), after characterizing Near v. Minnesota, supra, as "one of the landmark opinions" in its area, we took notice that Near "left no doubts that 'Liberty of speech, and of the press, is also not an absolute right . . . the protection even as to previous restraint is not absolutely unlimited.'. . . The judicial angle of vision," we said there, "in testing the validity of a statute like § 22-a [New York's injunctive remedy against certain forms of obscenity] is 'the operation and effect of the statute in substance.' " And as if to emphasize the point involved here, we added that "The phrase 'prior restraint' is not a self-wielding sword. Nor can it serve as a talismanic test." Even as recently as our last Term we again observed the principle, albeit in an allied area, that the State possesses some measure of power "to prevent the distribution of obscene matter." Smith v. California, 361 U. S. 147, 155 (1959).
Petitioner would have us hold that the public exhibition of motion pictures must be allowed under any circumstances. The State's sole remedy, it says, is the invocation of criminal process under the Illinois pornography statute, Ill. Rev. Stat. (1959), c. 38, § 470, and then only after a transgression. But this position, as we have seen, is founded upon the claim of absolute privilege against prior restraint under the First Amendment — a claim without sanction in our cases. To illustrate its fallacy, we need only point, to one of the "exceptional cases" which Chief Justice Hughes enumerated in Near v. Minnesota, supra, namely, "the primary requirements of decency [that] may be enforced against obscene publications." Moreover, we later held specifically "that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press." Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 485 (1957). Chicago emphasizes here its duty to protect its people against the dangers of obscenity in the public exhibition of motion pictures. To this argument petitioner's only answer is that regardless of the capacity for, or extent of, such an evil, previous restraint cannot be justified. With this we cannot agree. We recognized in Burstyn, supra, that "capacity for evil . . . may be relevant in determining the permissible scope of community control," at p. 502, and that motion pictures were not "necessarily subject to the precise rules governing any other particular method of expression. Each method," we said, "tends to present its own peculiar problems." At p. 503. Certainly petitioner's broadside attack does not warrant, nor could it justify on the record here, our saying that — aside from any consideration of the other "exceptional cases" mentioned in our decisions— the State is stripped of all constitutional power to prevent, in the most effective fashion, the utterance of this class of speech. It is not for this Court to limit the State in its selection of the remedy it deems most effective to cope with such a problem, absent, of course, a showing of unreasonable strictures on individual liberty resulting from its application in particular circumstances. Kingsley Books, Inc., v. Brown, supra, at p. 441. We, of course, are not holding that city officials may be granted the power to prevent the showing of any motion picture they deem unworthy of a license. Joseph Burstyn, Inc., v. Wilson, supra, at 504-505.
As to what may be decided when a concrete case involving a specific standard provided by this ordinance is presented, we intimate no opinion. The petitioner has not challenged all — or for that matter any — of the ordinance's standards. Naturally we could not say that every one of the standards, including those which Illinois' highest court has found sufficient, is so vague on its face that the entire ordinance is void. At this time we say no more than this — that we are dealing only with motion pictures and, even as to them, only in the context of the broadside attack presented on this record.
Affirmed.
The portion of the section here under attack is as follows:
"Such permit shall be granted only after the motion picture film for which said permit is requested has been produced at the office of the commissioner of police for examination or censorship. . . ."
That portion of § 155-4 of the Code providing standards is as follows:
"If a picture or series of pictures, for the showing or exhibition of which an application for a permit is made, is immoral or obscene, or portrays depravity, criminality, or lack of virtue of a class of citizens of any race, color, creed, or religion and exposes them to contempt, derision, or obloquy, or tends to produce a breach of the peace or riots, or purports to represent any hanging, lynching, or burning of a human being, it shall be the duty of the commissioner of police to refuse such permit; otherwise it shall be his duty to grant such permit.
"In case the commissioner of police shall refuse to grant a permit as hereinbefore provided, the applicant for the same may appeal to the mayor. Such appeal shall be presented in the same manner as the original application to the commissioner of police. The action of the mayor on any application for a permit shall be final."
It should be noted that the Supreme Court of Illinois, in an opinion by Schaefer, C. J., has already considered and rejected an argument against the same Chicago ordinance, similar to the claim advanced here by petitioner. The same court also sustained certain of the standards set out above. American Civil Liberties Union v. City of Chicago, 3 Ill. 2d 334, 121 N. E. 2d 585 (1954).
Joseph Burstyn, Inc., v. Wilson, supra ("sacrilegious"); Gelling v. Texas, 343 U. S. 960 (1952) ("prejudicial to the best interests of the people of said City"); Commercial Pictures Corp. v. Regents, 346 U. S. 587 (1954) ("immoral"); Superior Films, Inc., v. Department of Education, 346 U. S. 587 (1954) ("harmful"); Kingsley International Pictures Corp. v. Regents, 360 U. S. 684 (1959) ("sexual immorality").