Little Art Corp. v. Nebraska

Background

A person was convicted in Nebraska for circulating and publishing allegedly obscene motion pictures under Nebraska law §28-921, which bans selling, circulating, possessing to sell, or advertising obscene or lewd materials and imposes fines or jail time. The State’s conviction reached the Supreme Court, which acted after several recent decisions about obscenity.

Reasoning

The Court granted review, vacated the Nebraska judgment, and sent the case back to the lower court to reconsider the conviction in light of a group of recent Supreme Court obscenity rulings, including Miller v. California and related cases. The Court’s order did not resolve the ultimate question of the statute’s validity on the merits; instead it instructed the lower court to reevaluate the case under the new guidance from those decisions. Justice Douglas stated he would have granted review and reversed the conviction outright.

Real world impact

The immediate practical effect is that the Nebraska conviction was erased for now and the case will be reconsidered under the newer obscenity standards. Sellers or distributors of sexually oriented films in Nebraska face a reopening of the legal review, and the final result depends on how the lower courts apply the recent rulings. This outcome is procedural and not a final decision on whether the statute is constitutional.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Brennan, joined by Justices Stewart and Marshall, dissented, arguing the Nebraska law is facially overbroad and that the First and Fourteenth Amendments bar wholesale suppression of sexually oriented material except for juveniles or unconsenting adults; he would have vacated and ordered further proceedings consistent with that view.