Facts
- New York law prohibited exhibiting a motion picture without a license from the state education department.
- The licensing statute required denial if a film was “obscene, indecent, immoral,” or tended to “corrupt morals,” and an amendment defined “immoral” to include portraying “acts of sexual immorality” as “desirable, acceptable or proper patterns of behavior.”
- Kingsley International Pictures Corp. submitted the film Lady Chatterley’s Lover for licensing.
- The Motion Picture Division initially refused a license unless three scenes were deleted as “immoral.”
- On administrative review, the Regents upheld denial based on the film’s overall theme: it presented adultery as “desirable, acceptable and proper” behavior.
- Kingsley obtained an order in the Appellate Division annulling the denial and directing issuance of a license.
- The New York Court of Appeals reversed, sustaining the denial because the film “alluringly portrays adultery as proper behavior.”
- Kingsley appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Issues
- Whether the First and Fourteenth Amendments permit a state to deny a motion-picture license solely because the film presents adultery as right or desirable under certain circumstances.
- Whether suppressing a film’s exhibition based on disapproval of its theme constitutes unconstitutional censorship of protected expression.
Decision
- The Supreme Court reversed the New York Court of Appeals.
- As construed and applied, the statute violated the First Amendment (as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment) by suppressing the advocacy of an idea.
- The state could not deny the license on the ground that the film’s theme approved adultery, absent reliance on an unprotected category such as obscenity or incitement.
- The decision was unanimous.
Legal Principles
- Motion pictures are a form of expression protected by the First Amendment.
- The First Amendment protects the freedom to advocate ideas, including unpopular or morally disapproved ideas.
- Government may not impose viewpoint-based censorship by conditioning a license on agreement with official moral judgments.
- A state may regulate unprotected categories (e.g., obscenity or direct incitement to unlawful conduct), but may not suppress expression solely because it presents a disfavored moral viewpoint.
- A licensing scheme is unconstitutional as applied when used to bar exhibition because a film’s theme portrays certain conduct as desirable or proper.
Conclusion
The Court held that New York’s denial of a film license, grounded solely in the film’s approval of adultery as an idea, constituted unconstitutional viewpoint-based suppression of protected expression under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.