Facts of the Case
Appellant is a corporation engaged in the business of distributing motion pictures. It owns the exclusive rights to distribute throughout the United States a film produced in Italy entitled "The Miracle." On November 30, 1950, after having examined the picture, the motion picture division of the New York education department, acting under the statute quoted above, issued to appellant a license authorizing exhibition of "The Miracle," with English subtitles, as one part of a trilogy called "Ways of Love." [ Footnote 3 ] Thereafter, for a period of approximately eight weeks, "Ways of Love" was exhibited publicly in a motion picture theater in New York City under an agreement between appellant and the owner of the theater whereby appellant received a stated percentage of the admission price.
Conclusions
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Provisions of the New York Education Law which forbid the commercial showing of any motion picture film without a license and authorize denial of a license on a censor's conclusion that a film is "sacrilegious," held void as a prior restraint on freedom of speech and of the press under the First Amendment, made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 343 U. S. 497 -506.
After Espinoza, What’s Left of the Establishment Clause?
Federalist Society Review, Volume 21
Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...
