Times Film Corp. v. City of Chicago

1961-01-23

Headline: Movie censorship ruling upheld Chicago’s rule requiring films be shown to city officials before public screenings, allowing local governments to continue pre‑exhibition review of movies and affecting theater exhibitors.

Holding: The Court held that Chicago’s ordinance requiring film companies to submit movies for examination before public showing is not facially invalid under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, so the facial challenge fails.

Real World Impact:

Allows cities to require films be submitted for review before public exhibition.
Gives local officials power to delay or block screenings through administrative review.
Leaves filmmakers able to challenge specific censorship decisions in court, but not facially here.

Topics: movie censorship, free speech, obscenity rules, local government regulation

Summary

Background

A New York film company that owned the rights to the movie "Don Juan" applied for a Chicago permit but refused to bring the film in for the city’s required pre‑showing examination. City officials denied the permit, the company sued, and the courts considered whether the ordinance’s submission requirement was an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech.

Reasoning

The Court framed the question narrowly: does the ordinance’s requirement to submit films before exhibition fail on its face under the First and Fourteenth Amendments? The Court agreed movies get constitutional protection but said that freedom of speech is not absolute. Because no film or evidence about its content was shown to the courts here, the Court refused to strike down the submission rule across the board. The majority said it would consider standards or particular censorship decisions only in a concrete case that presents those facts.

Real world impact

The decision allows Chicago and similar cities to keep asking exhibitors to submit films for review before public showings. It does not mean every particular censorship decision is automatically valid — filmmakers can still challenge individual rejections or prosecutions later. But the ruling leaves in place an administrative submission process that can delay or block screenings until a specific dispute is brought and decided.

Dissents or concurrances

A strong dissent warned that the ruling effectively approves a licensing system of prior censorship, risks chilling many forms of expression, and lacks prompt judicial safeguards; dissenters urged that administrative preclearance of films should be invalidated.