Jacobellis v. Ohio
| Jacobellis v. Ohio | |
|---|---|
|
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| Argued March 26, 1963 Decided June 22, 1964 |
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| Full case name | Nico Jacobellis v. Ohio |
| Citations | 378 U.S. 184 (more)
84 S. Ct. 1676; 12 L. Ed. 2d 793; 1964 U.S. LEXIS 822; 28 Ohio Op. 2d 101
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| Prior history | Defendant convicted, Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, 6-3-60; affirmed, 175 N.E.2d 123 (Ohio Ct.App. 1961); affirmed, 179 N.E.2d 777 (Ohio 1962) |
| Subsequent history | None |
| Holding | |
| The First Amendment, as applied through the Fourteenth, protected a movie theater manager from being prosecuted for possessing and showing a film that was not obscene. | |
| Court membership | |
| Case opinions | |
| Plurality | Brennan, joined by Goldberg |
| Concurrence | Black, joined by Douglas |
| Concurrence | Stewart |
| Concurrence | Goldberg |
| Concurrence | White |
| Dissent | Warren, joined by Clark |
| Dissent | Harlan |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV; Ohio Rev. Code § 2905.34 | |
Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964), was a United States Supreme Court decision handed down in 1964 involving whether the state of Ohio could, consistent with the First Amendment, ban the showing of the Louis Malle film The Lovers (Les Amants), which the state had deemed obscene.
Nico Jacobellis, manager of the Heights Art Theatre in the Coventry Village neighborhood of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was convicted and fined $2,500 by a judge of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas for exhibiting the film, and his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court of Ohio.
The Supreme Court reversed the conviction by ruling that the film was not obscene and so was constitutionally protected. However, the Court could not agree as to a rationale, yielding four different opinions from the majority. No opinion, including the two dissenting ones, had the support of more than two justices. The decision was announced by William J. Brennan, but his opinion was joined only by Justice Arthur Goldberg.
Justice Hugo Black, joined by Justice William O. Douglas, reiterated his well-known view that the First Amendment does not permit censorship of any kind. Chief Justice Earl Warren, in dissent, decried the confused state of the Court's obscenity jurisprudence and argued that Ohio's action was consistent with the Court's decision in Roth v. United States and furthered important state interests. Justice John Marshall Harlan II also dissented; he believed that states should have "wide, but not federally unrestricted" power to ban obscene films.
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