The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck the act's anti-indecency provisions.
Stephen Gerald Breyer is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2022. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton, and replaced retiring justice Harry Blackmun. Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, was his designated successor. Breyer was generally associated with the liberal wing of the Court. He is now the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School.
Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court modifying its definition of obscenity from that of "utterly without socially redeeming value" to that which lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". It is now referred to as the three-prong standard or the Miller test.
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992), is a case of the United States Supreme Court that unanimously struck down St. Paul's Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance and reversed the conviction of a teenager, referred to in court documents only as R.A.V., for burning a cross on the lawn of an African-American family since the ordinance was held to violate the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech.
McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, 540 U.S. 93 (2003), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of most of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), often referred to as the McCain–Feingold Act.
Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U.S. 564 (2002), followed by 542 U.S. 656 (2004), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court, ruling that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech.
Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a violation of the Fourth Amendment requirement that police officers knock, announce their presence, and wait a reasonable amount of time before entering a private residence does not require suppression of the evidence obtained in the ensuing search.
Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U.S. 211 (1995), was a landmark case about separation of powers in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Congress may not retroactively require federal courts to reopen final judgments. Writing for the Court, Justice Scalia asserted that such action amounted to an unauthorized encroachment by Congress upon the powers of the judiciary and therefore violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers.
Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S. 560 (1991), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the First Amendment and the ability of the government to outlaw certain forms of expressive conduct. It ruled that the state has the constitutional authority to ban public nudity, even as part of expressive conduct such as dancing, because it furthers a substantial government interest in protecting the morality and order of society. This case is perhaps best summarized by a sentence in Justice Souter's concurring opinion, which is often paraphrased as "Nudity itself is not inherently expressive conduct."
Erie v. Pap's A. M., 529 U.S. 277 (2000), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States regarding nude dancing as free speech. The court held that an ordinance banning public nudity did not violate the operator of a totally nude entertainment establishment's constitutional right to free speech.
Davis v. Federal Election Commission, 554 U.S. 724 (2008), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that section 319 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 unconstitutionally infringed on candidates' rights as provided by First Amendment.
Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 556 U.S. 502 (2009), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court that upheld regulations of the Federal Communications Commission that ban "fleeting expletives" on television broadcasts, finding they were not arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. The constitutional issue, however, was not resolved and was remanded to the Second Circuit and re-appealed to the Supreme Court for a decision in June 2012.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down nine per curiam opinions during its 2000 term, which began October 2, 2000 and concluded September 30, 2001.
Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court that struck down a 2005 California law banning the sale of certain violent video games to children without parental supervision. In a 7–2 decision, the Court upheld the lower court decisions and nullified the law, ruling that video games were protected speech under the First Amendment as other forms of media.
Sable Communications of California v. Federal Communications Commission, 492 U.S. 115 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the definition of "indecent material" and whether it is protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court invalidated part of a federal law that prohibited "dial-a-porn" telephone messaging services by making it a crime to transmit commercial telephone messages that were either "obscene" or "indecent".
United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film, 413 U.S. 123 (1973), was an in rem case decided by the United States Supreme Court that considered the question of whether the First Amendment required that citizens be allowed to import obscene material for their personal and private use at home, which was already held to be protected several years earlier. By a 5–4 margin, the Court held that it did not.
Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U.S. 552 (2011), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a Vermont statute that restricted the sale, disclosure, and use of records that revealed the prescribing practices of individual doctors violated the First Amendment.
National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569 (1998), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act, as amended in 1990,, was facially valid, as it neither inherently interfered with First Amendment rights nor violated constitutional vagueness principles. The act in question required the Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to ensure that "artistic excellence and artistic merit are the criteria by which [grant] applications are judged, taking into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public". Justice O'Connor delivered the opinion of the Court.
United States obscenity law deals with the regulation or suppression of what is considered obscenity and therefore not protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In the United States, discussion of obscenity typically relates to defining what pornography is obscene, as well as to issues of freedom of speech and of the press, otherwise protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Issues of obscenity arise at federal and state levels. State laws operate only within the jurisdiction of each state, and there are differences among such laws. Federal statutes ban obscenity and child pornography produced with real children. Federal law also bans broadcasting of "indecent" material during specified hours.
Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC, 518 U.S. 604 (1996), was a case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Colorado Republican Party challenged the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as to whether the "Party Expenditure Provision" of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) violated the First Amendment right to free speech. This provision put a limit on the amount of money a national party could spend on a congressional candidate's campaign. The FEC argued that the Committee violated this provision when purchasing a radio advertisement that attacked the likely candidate of the Colorado Democratic Party. The court held that since the expenditures by the committee were made independently from a specific candidate, they did not violate the campaign contribution limitations established by the FECA, and were protected under the First Amendment.
