Erznoznik v. Jacksonville
**Overview of Erznoznik v. Jacksonville**
Erznoznik v. Jacksonville is a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court case that addressed the intersection of municipal regulation and First Amendment rights regarding freedom of speech. The case originated from a Jacksonville, Florida ordinance that prohibited drive-in theaters from showing films with nudity visible from public areas. Initially upheld by state courts, the ordinance faced scrutiny when challenged on constitutional grounds. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in a 6-3 decision that the ordinance violated the First Amendment, emphasizing that content-based restrictions on speech are typically disfavored under constitutional law.
The Court highlighted that the city's justifications—protecting citizens from offense, safeguarding children, and ensuring traffic safety—were insufficient to warrant such a restriction on protected speech. The majority opinion underscored that the public must sometimes tolerate offensive content as a facet of freedom, and noted that the ordinance did not effectively address the potential distractions posed by other images that might also affect drivers. The dissenting justices expressed concerns about public decency and the authority of the city to protect citizens from unsolicited nudity. This case remains significant in discussions about the balance between community standards and individual rights in the context of free expression.
Erznoznik v. Jacksonville
Court: U.S. Supreme Court
Decided: June 23, 1975
Significance: This decision, holding unconstitutional an ordinance prohibiting drive-in theaters with screens visible from public areas from showing films containing nudity, denied that government could shield citizens from all exposure to nudity in film
This case involved a challenge to the constitutionality of a Jacksonville, Florida, ordinance prohibiting drive-in theaters with screens visible from public streets or other places from exhibiting films containing nudity. After a state trial court upheld the ordinance against a First Amendment challenge, a state appeals court affirmed its ruling. When Florida’s supreme court declined to overturn these lower court decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the case for review. It ultimately held, in a 6-3 decision, that Jacksonville’s ordinance violated freedom of speech.
In an opinion written by Justice Lewis Powell, a majority of the Court found that the ordinance discriminated against films solely on the basis of their content—that is, whether or not they contained nudity. He noted that content-based discriminations are generally disfavored under the First Amendment.
During the course of these legal proceedings, the city conceded that not all films containing nudity are obscene and that its ordinance therefore restricted some speech which was not obscene and therefore protected by the First Amendment. However, the city urged that it was entitled to suppress nudity visible from a public place as a nuisance because of the offense some citizens might experience upon exposure to nude film images, to protect children from exposure to such images, and to enhance traffic safety by eliminating possible distractions to passing motorists.
The Supreme Court found each of these asserted justifications insufficient to warrant the city’s restriction of protected speech. Citizens, the Court observed, must sometimes endure offense as the price of freedom, especially citizens who—offended by nudity glimpsed on a drive-in theater’s screen—can readily avert their eyes. Furthermore, the Court continued, the ordinance could not be justified as protecting children from what might be obscene to their eyes, since not all nudity could be characterized as obscene, even to children. Finally, the Court declined to uphold the ordinance as a means of securing traffic safety, since the city had excluded only nudity in films, not other kinds of images which might also be distracting to passing motorists.
Chief Justice Warren Burger, together with justices William H. Rehnquist and Byron White, dissented. The chief justice, joined by Rehnquist, chided the Court’s majority for suggesting that bystanders could simply avert their eyes from a huge projection screen. In addition, he and the other dissenters pointed out that the city certainly had authority to protect the public from actual physical nudity in public places. Consequently, these justices argued, the city should be able to preserve the public from unsolicited glimpses of nudity on a drive-in theater’s screen just as they could protect citizens from physical displays of nudity in a public park.