Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court clarifying the legal definition of obscenity. The ruling was the origin of the three-part judicial test for determining obscene media content that can be banned by government authorities, which is now known as the Miller test.

Background

In 1971, Marvin Miller, owner of a California mail-order business specializing in pornographic films and books, mass-mailed a brochure advertising products that graphically depicted sexual activity between men and women. Five of the brochures were mailed to a restaurant in Newport Beach, California. The owner and his mother opened the envelope and, upon seeing the brochures, called the police.

Miller was arrested and charged with violating California Penal Code 311.2(a) which says in part: "Every person who knowingly sends or causes to be sent, or brings or causes to be brought, into this state for sale or distribution, [...] any obscene matter is for a first offense, guilty of a misdemeanor." California lawmakers wrote the statute based on two previous Supreme Court obscenity rulings: Memoirs v. Massachusetts and Roth v. United States.

Miller was tried by jury at the Superior Court of Orange County. The judge instructed the jury to evaluate the evidence by the community standards of California as defined by the statute. The jury returned a guilty verdict.

Since the Roth v. United States ruling in 1957,

In Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964, concerning a state ban of an adult-oriented film, Justice Potter Stewart opined that the Court "was faced with the task of trying to define what may be indefinable", and that criminal laws were constitutionally limited to hardcore pornography, which he did not try to define: "perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it". In Memoirs v. Massachusetts in 1966, the Supreme Court refined the Roth test to material that is "patently offensive" and "utterly without redeeming social value".

Impact and subsequent events

The Miller ruling, and particularly the resulting Miller test, was the Supreme Court's first comprehensive explication of obscene material that does not qualify for First Amendment protection and thus can be banned by governmental authorities with criminal charges for those who distribute it. Furthermore, due to the three-part test's stringent requirements, very few types of content can now be completely banned, and material that is appropriate for consenting adults can only be partially restricted per delivery method.

Miller failed to directly address government restrictions on public exhibitions of adult entertainment; this issue was handled in a companion case, Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, which was decided by the Supreme Court on the same day.

Categories of media material that completely fail the Miller test, and thus can be completely banned by government authorities, have been narrowed down in later Supreme Court rulings. Child pornography was deemed to be unprotected by the First Amendment in New York v. Ferber in 1982, because it has no redeeming social value per the Miller test. In Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition in 2002, however, the Court held that sexually explicit material that only appears to depict minors, but actually does not, might also be considered obscenity with no redeeming social value.

The "community standards" portion of the Miller test is of particular relevance with the rise of the Internet, as materials believed by some to be "obscene" can be accessed from anywhere in the nation, including places where there is a greater concern than other areas of the nation. Enforcing and applying obscenity laws to the Internet have proven difficult.

See also

  • List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 413
  • Sex-related court cases
  • United States obscenity law

References

Further reading

  • First Amendment Library entry for Miller v. California
  • Audio recordings or oral arguments and rearguments, from Oyez.org