Stanley V. Georgia - The Case

The Case

The majority opinion was written by Justice Thurgood Marshall, joined by Chief Justice Warren, Justice Douglas, Justice Harlan, and Justice Fortas. It was a unanimous 9-0 decision.

Although the defendant presented multiple arguments in his defense, the Court was able to reverse Georgia’s decision using just one of them. A distinction was drawn by the Court between public display and private possession of obscenity. Neither Roth nor any other case at the time set a precedent for private possession of obscenity. The Court thus decided to set precedent on this issue in this case. Roth dealt with the mailing and advertising of obscenity. A companion case, Alberts v. California, involved the advertising and sale of obscene materials. All earlier cases were decided with the negative externality of obscenity in mind. They reasoned that members of the public, especially impressionable children, should have a valid expectation to not be inadvertently exposed to obscenity. Public display of obscenity was deemed an “important interest” in Roth. Private possession was not as interesting in the eyes of the Court.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects freedom of speech. In Winters v. New York, a notion was established that freedom of speech extended to what an individual possesses and chooses to read. “The Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth…”. For this reason, the Court dismissed Georgia’s argument that drew a line between communication of ideas and “mere entertainment”. Marshall noted that such a line could not be objectively drawn.

The Court reasoned that the Georgia decision encroached on Stanley’s pursuit of happiness. Stanley should have a right to define his own spiritual nature. An individual’s First Amendment rights must always be protected, unless there is cause to believe that a certain type of expression may cause significant public harm.

The Court dismissed Georgia in claiming that possession of obscenity necessarily led to “deviant sexual behavior” and “crimes of sexual violence”, as there was little empirical evidence supporting the claim. The Court reasoned that primary crime deterrents should be education and punitive measures for violation of the law. Punishment for an act solely as a preventative measure to ensure that another law would not be violated was discouraged. Georgia also claimed that the possession of obscenity was indistinguishable from its distribution. They claimed that it would be impossible to effectively control distribution if possession was permissible. The Court did not agree with the validity of this claim, and further asserted that an individual’s First Amendment rights were more important in this case.

By the First Amendment, as applied to the states by the Fourteenth, private possession of obscenity was decided to be legal. The Court noted that this does not affect or change Roth or other cases that deal with public obscenity.