Court Opinion

ID: 9421875
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:00:16.766756+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:32.422828
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Clark,
concurring in the result.
1 can take the words of the majority of the New York Court of Appeals only in their clear, unsophisticated and common meaning. They say that §§.122 .and 122-a of New York’s Education Law “require the denial óf a license to ^motion pictures which are immoral in that they portray ‘acts of sexual immorality ... as desirable, acceptable or proper patterns of behavior.’ ” That court states the issue in the case in this language:
“Moving pictures are our only concern and, what is more to the point, only those motion pictures which *700alluringly present acts of sexual immorality as proper behavior.” 4 N. Y. 2d 349, 361, 151 N. E. 2d 197, 203, 175 N. Y. S. 2d 39, 48.
Moreover, it' is significant to note that in its 14-page opinion that court says again and again, in fact 15 times, that the picture “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” is proscribed because of its “espousal” of sexual immorality as “desirable” or as “proper conduct for the people of our State.”*
The minority of my brothers here, however, twist this holding into one that New York’s Act requires “obscenity or incitement, not just abstract expressions of opinion.” But I cannot so obliterate the repeated declarations above-mentioned that were made not only 15 times by the Court of Appeals but which were the basis of the Board of Regents’ decision as well. Such a construction would raise many problems, not the least of which would be our failure to accept New York’s interpretation of the scope of its own Act. I feel, as does the majority here, bound by their holding.
In this context, the Act comes within the ban of Joseph Burstyn, Inc., v. Wilson, 343 U. S. 495 (1952). We held there that “expression by means of motion pic*701tures is included within the free speech and free press guaranty of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” Id.,. at 502. Referring to Near v. Minnesota, 283 U. S. 697 (1931), we said that while “a major-purpose.of the First Amendment guaranty of a free press was to. prevent prior restraints upon publication” such protection was not unlimited but did place on the State “a heavy burden to demonstrate that the limitation challenged” was exceptional. Id., at 503-504. The standard applied there was the word “sacrilegious” and we found it set the censor “adrift upon a boundless sea amid a myriad of conflicting currents of religious views . . . .” Id., at 504. We struck it down.
Here the standard is the portrayal of “acts of sexual immorality ... as. desirable, acceptable or proper patterns of behavior.” Motion picture plays invariably have a hero, a villain, supporting characters, a location, a plot, a diversion from the main theme and usually a moral. As we said in Burstyn: “They may affect public attitudes and behavior in a variety of ways, ranging from- direct espousal of a political or social doctrine to the subtle shaping of thought which characterizes all artistic expression.” 343 U. S'., at 501. What may be to one viewer the glorification of an idea as being “desirable, acceptable or proper” may to the notions of another be entirely devoid of such a teaching. The only limits on the censor’s discretion is his understanding of what is -included within the term “desirable, acceptable or proper.” This is nothing less than a roving commission in which individual impressions become the yardstick of action,- and result in regulation in accordance with the beliefs of the individual censor rather than regulation by law. Even here three of my brothers “cannot regard this film as depicting anything more than a somewhat unusual, and rather pathetic, ‘love triangle,’ ” At least three — perhaps four — of the members of New York’s highest court thought otherwise. I *702need only say that the obscurity of the standard presents such a choice of difficulties that even the most experienced find themselves at dagger’s point.
It may be, as Chief Judge Conway said, “that our public morality, possibly more than ever before, needs every protection government can give.” 4 N. Y. 2d, at 363, 151 N. E. 2d, at 204-205, 175 N. Y. S. 2d, at 50. And, as my Brother Harlan points out, “each time such a statute is struck down, the State is left in more confusion.” This is true where broad grounds are employed leaving no indication as to what may be necessary to meet the requirements of due process. I see no grounds for confusion, however, were a statute to ban “pornographic” films, or those that “portray acts of sexual immorality, perversion or lewdness.” If New York’s statute had been so construed by its highest court I'believe it would have met the requirements of due process. Instead, it placed more emphasis on what the film teaches than on what it depicts. There is where the confusion enters. For this reason, I would reverse on' the authority of Burstyn.

The phrase is not always identical but varies from the words of the statute, “acts of sexual immorality ... as desirable, acceptable or proper patterns of behavior,” to such terms “as proper conduct for the people of our State”; “exaltation of illicit sexual love in derogation of the restraints of marriage”; as “a proper pattern of behavior”; “the espousal of sexually immoral acts”; “which debase fundamental sexual morality by portraying its converse to the people as alluring and desirable”; “which alluring] portrays sexually-immoral acts as proper behavior”; “by presentmg . . . [adultery] in a clearly approbatory manner”; “which alluringly portrays adultery as proper behavior”; “which alluringly portray acts of sexual immorality (here adultery) and recommend them as a proper way of life”; “which alluringly portray adultery as proper and desirable”; and “which alluringly portray acts of sexual immorality by adultery as proper behavior.”