Opinion ID: 1726049
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the current status of the federal constitutional law on obscenity

Text: In Miller v California , [4] the United States Supreme Court simultaneously reaffirmed its previous position that obscenity is not constitutionally protected speech [5] and fashioned a new, more restrictive definition of constitutionally protected speech. [6] In Paris Adult Theatre I v Slaton, 413 US 49; 93 S Ct 2628; 37 L Ed 2d 446 (1973), released with Miller, the Court also unequivocally rejected the de facto holding of Redrup v New York, [7] 386 US 767; 87 S Ct 1414; 18 L Ed 2d 515 (1967), that state police powers could not regulate obscene materials if displayed only to consenting adults. The Court announced that there are legitimate state interests at stake in stemming the tide of commercialized obscenity, even assuming it is feasible to enforce effective safeguards against exposure to juveniles and to passersby. 413 US 49, 57-58. After dismantling the Redrup protection accorded to materials restrictively displayed, the Court proceeded in Miller to broaden the scope of the obscenity standard previously enunciated in Memoirs v Massachusetts , [8] 383 US 413; 86 S Ct 975; 16 L Ed 2d 1 (1966). Under the new Miller formulation, the Court declined to propose regulatory schemes for the States, Miller, supra, 25, but instead revised the Memoirs test in order to provide guidelines for the trier of fact to determine what is constitutionally obscene: (a) whether `the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. (Citations omitted.) 413 US 15, 24. Concomitant with its expansion of the scope of unprotected speech, the Court's majority emphasized that state statutes designed to regulate obscene materials must be specifically defined and carefully limited either as written or as authoritatively construed by the state courts. The Court offered two examples of what a state statute could define for regulation under the second part (b) of [the Miller test]: (a) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated. (b) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibition of the genitals. 413 US 15, 25. See, also, United States v 12 200-ft Reels of Super 8mm Film, 413 US 123, 130, fn 7; 92 S Ct 2665; 37 L Ed 2d 500 (1973). The majority was also careful to point out that its entire consideration of the question of obscenity was limited to the minimum protections afforded by the United States Constitution. That is, the Court did not undertake to tell the States what they must do, but rather to define the area in which they may chart their own course in dealing with obscene materials. 413 US 49, 53-54. Therefore, under the guarantees of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the states may not use their police powers to regulate speech in a more restrictive fashion than allowed by Miller et al. [9]