Facts
- A Chicago ordinance required motion pictures to be submitted to the police commissioner for examination before public exhibition and conditioned a permit on compliance.
- Times Film Corp. held exclusive Chicago exhibition rights to a film, Don Juan.
- Times Film applied for an exhibition permit and tendered the license fee but refused to submit the film for examination.
- City officials denied the permit solely because Times Film refused to submit the film.
- Times Film sued in federal district court seeking an injunction requiring issuance of a permit without submission and barring enforcement interference.
- Times Film did not submit the film to the court and offered no evidence about the film’s content; it challenged only the prior-submission requirement, not the ordinance’s substantive standards.
Issues
- Whether a facial challenge to the ordinance’s prior-submission requirement, without providing the film or evidence of its content, presents a justiciable controversy.
- Whether requiring submission of motion pictures for examination before exhibition, as a condition of a permit, is void on its face as an unconstitutional prior restraint under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Decision
- The Supreme Court held the dispute was justiciable because the ordinance was applied to Times Film (permit denial for noncompliance) and enforcement consequences were imminent.
- The Court affirmed dismissal on the merits of the facial First Amendment claim, holding the prior-submission requirement was not void on its face.
- The Court limited its ruling to the narrow facial attack and did not decide the validity of the ordinance’s substantive standards or any particular censorship decision.
Legal Principles
- A concrete denial of a permit based on refusal to comply with a licensing prerequisite can create a justiciable controversy even when the challenger withholds the expressive material at issue.
- First Amendment protections for motion pictures do not establish an absolute right to publicly exhibit any film at least once without prior governmental review.
- Not all prior restraints are per se invalid; a requirement of prior submission for film licensing is not automatically unconstitutional on its face.
- When a party challenges only the existence of a prior-submission scheme and not the governing standards or procedural protections, a court may resolve only that narrow question and leave other constitutional issues open.
Conclusion
The Court concluded that the city’s denial of a permit for failure to submit a film created a real controversy, but it rejected the claim that mandatory prior submission of motion pictures for examination is facially forbidden by the First and Fourteenth Amendments, affirming dismissal while reserving challenges to standards, procedures, or specific applications.