Freedman v. Maryland
Freedman v. Maryland is a significant Supreme Court case that addresses the issue of film censorship and First Amendment rights. In the 1950s, Maryland enacted legislation requiring films to receive prior approval from a state censorship board before they could be publicly exhibited. Ronald Freedman, a film exhibitor, challenged this law after refusing to submit his film, *Revenge at Daybreak*, for approval, arguing that the statute constituted an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Freedman, determining that the Maryland statute lacked necessary procedural safeguards for filmmakers, such as the requirement for a judicial order before a film could be deemed obscene and barred from exhibition. This ruling set a precedent for limiting the power of censorship boards and reinforced the importance of First Amendment protections. Following this decision, states and municipalities began to dismantle their censorship boards, leading to the adoption of a film rating system that allowed for the categorization of films, particularly those with sexual content. Freedman v. Maryland thus played a crucial role in shaping the legal landscape surrounding freedom of expression in the film industry.
Freedman v. Maryland
Court: U.S. Supreme Court
Date: March 1, 1965
Significance: This Supreme Court decision established procedural safeguards that government must observe before it can bar exhibitions of films that it deems to be obscene
In an effort to combat obscenity, the state of Maryland enacted legislation in the 1950’s providing that no film could be publicly exhibited unless the State Board of Censors gave its approval. A film exhibitor named Ronald Freedman refused to submit his film Revenge at Daybreak to the board prior to exhibition—even though the film was not obscene—because of his objections to the censorship process. After being convicted of violating the Maryland statute, Freedman appealed his conviction on the ground that the statute requiring prior approval by the state before showing a film constituted a form of prior restraint that violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Four years earlier the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld, in a 5-4 decision, a Chicago municipal code provision requiring the submission of motion pictures to a censorship board in advance of exhibition in Times Film Corporation v. Chicago (1961). The petitioner in that case had argued that any prior restraint on the exhibition of a film was unconstitutional. The Court rejected that argument but did not address the issue of whether such a censorship system must comply with certain safeguards in order to pass constitutional muster.
In his own appeal to the Supreme Court, Freedman addressed the issue left unresolved in the Times Film Corp. case. He argued that Maryland’s statute did not afford sufficient procedural safeguards to film exhibitors whose films were rejected by the board of censors. The Court unanimously agreed, holding that a state could require its board of censors to approve films prior to their exhibition only if the process observed certain procedural safeguards. The Court specified that a board of censors could not bar a film’s exhibition without first securing a judicial order emanating from an adversary proceeding at which the board has borne the burden of establishing that the film is obscene. Because Maryland’s law did not satisfy this criterion, the Court struck it down as an invalid prior restraint.
In several decisions following the Freedman case, the Supreme Court imposed procedural safeguards on censorship of other forms of communications. The Court has, for example, imposed procedural requirements in cases involving censorship of mail, parades, and distribution of flyers and leaflets. The Freedman decision led to the demise of municipal and state censor boards. In its place, the film industry adopted a rating system designating sexually explicit films X so that minors are not admitted to view them.