Court Opinion

ID: 9425387
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:34.651466+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.211790
License: Public Domain

Mb. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mb. Justice Stewart and Mr. Justice Marshall join, dissenting.
We noted probable jurisdiction to consider the constitutionality of 19 U. S. C. § 1305(a), which prohibits all persons from “importing into the United States from any foreign country . . . any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing, or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper or other material, or any east, instrument, or other article which is obscene or immoral.” Pursuant to that provision, customs authorities at Los Angeles seized certain movie films, color slides, photographs, and other materials, which claimant sought to import into the United States. A complaint was filed in the United States. District Court for the Central District of California for forfeiture of these items as obscene. Relying on the decision in United States v. Thirty-seven Photographs, 309 F. Supp. 36 (CD Cal. 1969), which held the statute unconstitutional on its face, the District Court dismissed the complaint. Although we subsequently reversed the decision in United States v. Thirty-seven Photographs, 402 U. S. 363 (1971), the reasoning that led us to uphold the statute is no longer viable, under the view expressed in my dissent today in Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, ante, p. 73. Whatever the extent of the Federal Government’s power to bar the distribution of allegedly obscene material to juveniles or the offensive exposure of such material to unconsenting adults, the statute before us is, in my view, clearly overbroad and unconstitutional on its face. See my dissent in Miller v. California, ante, at 47. I would therefore affirm the judgment of the District Court.