Supreme Court Declines to Hear Obscenity Case

Justice is reporting that Monday the Supreme Court declined to hear the obscenity case of Nitke v. Gonzales. From the article: "Even in our federal system of government, the law concerning obscenity is a legal oddity. A photograph that in New York would be considered protected speech under the First Amendment could in Alabama be considered obscene, making the photographer and distributors subject to felony charges. That's a consequence of the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 case, Miller v. California, in which the court ruled that obscenity was essentially a subjective judgment, and called for prosecutors, judges and juries to apply 'community standards' in determining what speech was obscene and what was protected. In the age of the Internet, a new issue has been raised - if something considered free speech in New York is accessible in Alabama, where it's considered obscene, what standard should be used? By rejecting the case, the Supreme Court has left that question open."

Comments

Re:The Supreme Court takes a step forward.

[LordKazan]

Excuse me - but your post is not Insightful - infact it's not even FACTUAL. Furthermore the "republicans have controlled" the supreme court for a long time - 7 to 2 Republican vs Democratic appointees.

If you think the Republicans are about small government, states rights, fiscal responibility and personal responsibility then you are SORELY mistaken and haven't been paying the slightest bit of attention to the current Republican President and his republican congress - nor have you paid attention to the last two republican presidents before him.

The last real Republican was Eisenhower.

Just the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why you think this returns power to the community. It's just the opposite. This now gives the Feds permission to file federal obscenity charges against any site they wish. All the Feds have to do is find the most conservative community in the country, file the obscenity charges from that community, and then when the court looks at that community's standards they will find that the web site is indeed obscene by law.

The Supreme Court just handed the federal government a big permission slip to overrule community standards in New York or LA or any other big city by applying some small town's standards everywhere.

Re:The Supreme Court takes a step forward.

[general_re]

You know, we wouldn't play along if the Iranians demanded that we hand over someone from California for publishing material offensive to Islam. Why on earth should we play along when the citizens of Biblethump, Tennessee demand that the same Californian be handed over for offending them?