Court Opinion

ID: 9426142
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:58.393269+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:59.276846
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
concurring.
I join wholeheartedly in the Court’s view that the ordinance in issue here is fatally overinclusive in some respects and fatally underinclusive in others. I do not doubt that under proper circumstances, a narrowly drawn ordinance could be utilized within constitutional boundaries to protect the interests of captive audiences1 or to promote highway safety. In these days of heavy traffic, it is reasonable to attempt to remove all distractions that might increase accidents. These legitimate interests cannot, however, justify attempts to discriminate among movies on the basis of their content — a “pure” movie is apt to be just as distracting to drivers as an “impure” one, and to be just as intrusive upon the privacy of an unwilling but captive audience. Any ordinance which regulates movies on the basis of content, whether by an obscenity standard2 or by some other criterion, impermissibly intrudes upon the free speech rights guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

 See Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U. S. 298, 305 (1974) (Douglas, J., concurring in judgment); Public Utilities Comm’n v. Pollak, 343 U. S. 451, 467 (1952) (Douglas, J., dissenting).

 I adhere to my view that any state or federal regulation of obscenity is prohibited by the Constitution. Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 508-514 (1957) (dissenting); Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15, 42-47 (1973) (dissenting); Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U. S. 49, 70-73 (1973) (dissenting).