Court Opinion

ID: 9427827
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:02.759191+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:09.762234
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
with whom Mr. Justice Rehnquist joins, dissenting.
The Court of Appeals invalidated Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann., Art. 4667 (a) (Vernon Supp. 1978), for what I understand to be two distinct reasons. Neither is valid, and to the extent that the Court falls into the same error, I respectfully dissent.
I
The Court of Appeals 'first characterized Art. 4667 (a) as a prior restraint on expression and invalidated it for this reason. I disagree. In my view, Art. 4667 (a), standing alone, intrudes no more on First Amendment values than would a criminal statute barring exhibition of obscene films in terms that would be valid under our cases.
The Court of Appeals’ analysis of Art. 4667 (a), and that of this Court as well, glosses over what I take to be a crucial *321feature of that law. Before an exhibitor can be found to have violated an Art. 4667 (a) injunction, there must be two quite separate judicial proceedings. First, the plaintiff must obtain temporary or permanent injunctive relief against the habitual use of the subject premises for the commercial exhibition of obscene motion pictures. Second, the exhibitor must be found in criminal or civil contempt for violating the terms of the injunction. When these separate proceedings are carefully distinguished, it becomes apparent that neither individually nor jointly do they impose an impermissible burden on the exercise of First Amendment freedoms.
The initial injunctive proceeding is both substantively and procedurally sound under our precedents. Although the lack of an actual Art. 4667 (a) injunction in the present case gives a somewhat abstract and hypothetical tone to the analysis, it seems undisputed that any injunction granted under Art. 4667 (a) will be phrased in terms of the Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15 (1973), definition of obscenity.1 Hence an Art. 4667 (a) injunction would not by its terms forbid the exhibition of any materials protected by the First Amendment and would impose no greater functional burden on First Amendment values than would an equivalent — and concededly *322valid — criminal statute. It simply declares to the exhibitor that the future showing of obscene motion pictures will be punishable.2 It is true that an Art. 4667 (a) injunction is issued by a court of law while a criminal statute is imposed by a legislature. Yet this distinction seems irrelevant for First Amendment purposes.
Of course, an exhibitor who continues to show arguably obscene motion pictures after an Art. 4667 (a) injunction has issued against him does run the risk of being held in contempt. The Court implies that this danger renders Art. 4667 (a) unconstitutional because under Walker v. City of Birmingham, 388 U. S. 307, 317-321 (1967), an exhibitor could be held in contempt even if the film is ultimately found to be nonobscene. Ante, at 316, and n. 15.- This conclusion is plainly wrong. As I have noted, and as the majority does not dispute, an Art. 4667 (a) injunction, temporary injunction, or temporary restraining order will be phrased in terms of a constitutionally adequate definition of obscenity. Therefore, contrary to the Court’s inference, the motion picture’s nonobscenity would clearly defeat any contempt proceeding brought under Art. 4667 (a), since if the film were not obscene, there would be no violation of the injunction.
There remains the question of whether the procedures employed at a contempt proceeding satisfy First Amendment requirements. I believe that they do. An exhibitor who shows a film arguably violative of the injunction would likely be tried for criminal contempt. At such a proceeding the exhibitor would have the constitutional rights of any criminal defendant. In particular, the State would bear the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the film which *323allegedly violated the injunction was obscene.3 Such procedures seem more than adequate to satisfy any procedural requirements that may exist with respect to criminal contempt proceedings in the First Amendment context.
The defendant might also be held in civil contempt if he refused to cease showing a specific motion picture proved to be obscene and contrary to the terms of the injunction. A civil contempt proceeding, unlike the original Art. 4667 (a) injunction, could result in jailing or fining the exhibitor until he ceased showing a film that had been publicly determined to be obscene. But such procedures would fully satisfy the requirements of our cases. Under Texas law, no one may be held in civil contempt unless he has received notice, in the form of an order to show cause, and a hearing on the charge against him. E. g., Ex parte Mouille, 572 S. W. 2d 80, 62 (Tex. Civ. App. 1978). The burden of bringing civil contempt charges is on the party seeking to suppress the exhibition; presumably, that party as plaintiff also bears the burden of showing noncompliance with the injunction, and in particular of proving that the exhibitor has shown obscene films. Since contempt proceedings are held before a court, a civil contempt order will not issue until there has been a final judicial determination that the defendant has exhibited and *324continues to exhibit obscene films. And even then the exhibitor could purge his contempt by ceasing to exhibit such films.
The Court of Appeals and the Court, therefore, too easily equate an injunction against the exhibition of unnamed, obscene films with a typical “prior restraint.” The Art. 4667 (a) injunction does, in a sense, “restrain” future speech by declaring punishable future exhibitions of obscene motion pictures. But in this weak sense of the term criminal obscenity statutes would also be considered “prior restraints.” Prior restraints are distinct from, and more dangerous to free speech than, criminal statutes because, through caprice, mistake, or purpose, the censor may forbid speech which is constitutionally protected, and because the speaker may be punished for disobeying the censor even though his speech was protected. Those dangers are entirely absent here. An injunction against the showing of unnamed obscene motion pictures does not and cannot bar the exhibitor from showing protected material, nor can the exhibitor be punished, through contempt proceedings, for showing such material. The Art. 4667 (a) injunction, in short, does not impose a traditional prior restraint. On the contrary, it seems to me functionally indistinguishable from a criminal obscenity statute. Since an appropriately worded criminal statute is constitutionally valid, I believe that Art. 4667 (a) is valid also.
II
The second reason given by the Court of Appeals for invalidating Art. 4667 (a) and apparently adopted by this Court, was the “failure to provide the safeguards mandated by” Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U. S. 51 (1965), and Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U. S. 546 (1975). Those cases held that injunctions against showing allegedly obscene films are invalid unless (1) the burdens of instituting proceedings and of proving the material is obscene are on the censor; (2) the restraint prior to judicial review continues *325only for a limited time and only to preserve the status quo; and, (3) there is an assurance of prompt final judicial determination of the films’ obscenity.
I fail to see, however, how the Freedman restraints are relevant to the injunction contemplated by Art. 4667 (a). The Freedman restraints are wholly appropriate with respect to injunctions against specific, named films, but the injunction contemplated by Art. 4667 (a) is one directed against the future showing of unnamed obscene motion pictures. Because the films enjoined are unnamed, a final judicial determination of obscenity is logically impossible prior to or at the time the injunction issues. As I have said, an Art. 4667 (a) injunction no more restrains the showing of particular films than would a similarly worded criminal statute.
The Court of Appeals referred to the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure and declared that injunctions under those Rules could be issued without compliance with Freedman requirements. I would agree that the Texas procedures for enjoining the showing of named films must comply with the First Amendment requirements set out in our cases, but I fail to perceive why the inadequacy of the Texas procedures in this respect invalidates Art. 4667 (a), a separate statutory provision, contemplating only injunctions against unnamed films.
In this light, striking down Art. 4667 (a) is wholly gratuitous, and I respectfully dissent.

 The en. banc Fifth Circuit and the District Court both found that the term “obscene” in Art. 4667 (a) would be defined with reference to Tex. Penal Code Ann. §43.21 (Supp. 1979). 587 F. 2d 159, 168, and n. 18 (1978)) 404 F. Supp. 33, 39 (1975). See also Locke v. State, 516 S..W. 2d 949, 952 (Tex. Civ. App. 1974). Section 43.21, in turn, tracks nearly verbatim the Miller guidelines. The Fifth Circuit panel, in an aspect of its decision that was not repudiated by the Circuit en banc, held:
“The statute authorizes an injunction against the commercial manufacture, distribution or exhibition of obscene material only. . . . Were a Texas court to issue an overbroad injunction restricting nonobscene (and therefore protected) matter, it would exceed both its constitutional and its statutory authority.” 559 F. 2d 1286, 1292 (1977) (emphasis in original).
I do not read today’s decision as disputing that under Texas law a valid Art. 4667 (a) injunction will be phrased in terms of a constitutionally adequate definition of obscenity.

 Indeed, the Art. 4667 (a) procedure provides greater protection to speech than would an equivalent criminal statute, since no one is punishable for violating an Art. 4667 (a) injunction unless a plaintiff has already gone to the considerable trouble of first obtaining a public nuisance injunction against the defendant.

 The Fifth Circuit majority expressed some doubt as to whether the State will have the burden of proof of showing that the film is obscene. 587 F. 2d, at 171, n. 23, citing Railroad Comm’n v. Sample, 405 S. W. 2d 338, 343 (Tex. 1966). The Sample case was a challenge to an order of the State Railroad Commission, not a contempt proceeding; it stands at most for the proposition that in Texas an order to show cause does not conclusively establish which party bears the burden of proof. The case does not establish that a party receiving an order to show cause why he should not be held in criminal contempt bears the burden of proof on any element of the contempt. To the contrary, obscenity is one element of the injunction, and if the State has the burden of showing violation of the injunction beyond a reasonable doubt, it follows that the State as a matter of due process has the burden of showing that the particular film shown was obscene.