One, Inc. v. Olesen

One, Inc. v. Olesen
Supreme Court of the United States
Submitted June 13, 1957 Decided January 13, 1958
Full case name	'One, Incorporated, v. Otto K. Olesen, Postmaster of the City of Los Angeles'
Citations	355 U.S. 371 (more) 241 F.2d 772 (9th Cir. 1957)
Prior history	Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Holding
Pro-homosexual writing is not per se obscene.
Court membership
Case opinions
Per curiam.

One, Inc. v. Olesen 355 U.S. 371 (January 13, 1958) is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision for LGBT rights in the United States. It was the first U.S. Supreme Court ruling to deal with homosexuality and the first to address free speech rights with respect to homosexuality.

ONE, Inc., a spinoff of the Mattachine Society, published the early pro-gay "ONE: The Homosexual Magazine" beginning in 1952. After a campaign of harassment from the U.S. Post Office Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles Postmaster Otto Olesen declared the October 1954 issue "obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy" and therefore unmailable under the . In that issue, the Post Office objected to "Sappho Remembered", a story of a lesbian's affection for a twenty-year-old "girl" who gives up her boyfriend to live with the lesbian, because it was "lustfully stimulating to the average homosexual reader"; "Lord Samuel and Lord Montagu", a poem about homosexual cruising that it said contained "filthy words"; and (3) an advertisement for The Circle, a magazine containing homosexual pulp romance stories, that would direct the reader to other obscene material.

The magazine, represented by a young attorney who had authored the cover story in the October 1954 issue, Eric Julber, brought suit in U.S. District Court seeking an injunction against the Postmaster. In March 1956, U.S. District Judge Thurmond Clarke ruled for the defendant. He wrote: "The suggestion advanced that homosexuals should be recognized as a segment of our people and be accorded special privilege as a class is rejected." A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision unanimously in February 1957. Jubel filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on June 13, 1957. On January 13, 1958, that court both accepted the case and, without hearing oral argument, issued a terse per curiam decision reversing the Ninth Circuit. The decision, citing its June 24, 1957, landmark decision in Roth v. United States 354 U.S. 476 (1957), read in its entirety: