United States v. Reidel/Opinion of the Court

Section 1461 of Title 18, U.S.C., prohibits the knowing use of the mails for the delivery of obscene matter. The issue presented by the jurisdictional statement in this case is whether § 1461 is constitutional as applied to the distribution of obscene materials to willing recipients who state that they are adults. The District Court held that it was not. We disagree and reverse the judgment.

* On April 15, 1970, the appellee, Norman Reidel, was indicted on three counts, each count charging him with having mailed a single copy of an illustrated booklet entitled The True Facts About Imported Pornography. One of the copies had been mailed to a postal inspector stipulated to be over the age of 21, who had responded to a newspaper advertisement. The other two copies had been seized during a search of appellee's business premises; both of them had been deposited in the mail by Reidel but had been returned to him in their original mailing envelopes bearing the mark 'undelivered.' As to these two booklets, the Government conceded that it had no evidence as to the identity or age of the addressees or as to their willingness to receive the booklets. Nor does the record indicate why the booklets were returned undelivered.

Reidel moved in the District Court before trial to dismiss the indictment, contending, among other things, that § 1461 was unconstitutional. Assuming for the purpose of the motion that the booklets were obscene, the trial judge granted the motion to dismiss on the ground that Reidel had made a constitutionally protected delivery and hence that § 1461 was unconstitutional as applied to him. The Government's direct appeal is here under 18 U.S.C. § 3731.

In Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498 (1957), Roth was convicted under § 1461 for mailing obscene circulars and advertising. The Court affirmed the conviction, holding that 'obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press,' id., at 485, 77 S.Ct., at 1309, and that § 1461, 'applied according to the proper standard for judging obscenity, do(es) not offend constitutional safeguards against convictions based upon protected material, or fail to give men in acting adequate notice of what is prohibited.' Id., at 492, 77 S.Ct., at 1313. Roth has not been overruled. It remains the law in this Court and governs this case. Reidel, like Roth, was charged with using the mails for the distribution of obscene material. His conviction, if it occurs and the materials are found in fact to be obscene, would be no more vulnerable than was Roth's.

Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 89 S.Ct. 1243, 22 L.Ed.2d 542 (1969), compels no different result. There, pornographic films were found in Stanley's home and he was convicted under Georgia statutes for possessing obscene material. This Court reversed the conviction, holding that the mere private possession of obscene matter cannot constitutionally be made a crime. But it neither overruled nor disturbed the holding in Roth. Indeed, in the Court's view, the constitutionality of proscribing private possession of obscenity was a matter of first impression in this Court, a question neither involved nor decided in Roth. The Court made its point expressly: 'Roth and the cases following that decision are not impaired by today's holding. As we have said, the States retain broad power to regulate obscenity; that power simply does not extend to mere possession by the individual in the privacy of his own home.' Id., at 568, 89 S.Ct., at 1249. Nothing in Stanley questioned the validity of Roth insofar as the distribution of obscene material was concerned. Clearly the Court had no thought of questioning the validity of § 1461 as applied to those who, like Reidel, are routinely disseminating obscenity through the mails and who have no claim, and could make none, about unwanted governmental intrusions into the privacy of their home. The Court considered this sufficiently clear to warrant summary affirmance of the judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia rejecting claims that under Stanley v. Georgia, Georgia's obscenity statute could not be applied to book sellers. Gable v. Jenkins, 397 U.S. 592, 90 S.Ct. 1351, 25 L.Ed.2d 595 (1970).

The District Court ignored both Roth and the express limitations on the reach of the Stanley decision. Relying on the statement in Stanley that 'the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas * *  * regardless of their social worth.' 394 U.S., at 564, 89 S.Ct., at 1247, the trial judge reasoned that 'if a person has the right to receive and possess this material, then someone must have the right to deliver it to him.' He concluded that § 1461 could not be validly applied 'where obscene material is not directed at children, or it is not directed at an unwilling public, where the material such as in this case is solicited by adults *  *  * .'

The District Court gave Stanley too wide a sweep. To extrapolate from Stanley's right to have and peruse obscene material in the privacy of his own home a First Amendment right in Reidel to sell it to him would effectively scuttle Roth, the precise result that the Stanley opinion abjured. Whatever the scope of the 'right to receive' referred to in Stanley, it is not so broad as to immunize the dealings in obscenity in which Reidel engaged here-dealings that Roth held unprotected by the First Amendment.

The right Stanley asserted was 'the right to read or observe what he pleases-the right to satisfy his intellectual and emotional needs in the privacy of his own home.' 394 U.S., at 565, 89 S.Ct., at 1248. The Court's response was that 'a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the though of giving government the power to control men's minds.' Ibid. The focus of this language was on freedom of mind and thought and on the privacy of one's home. It does not require that we fashion or recognize a constitutional right in people like Reidel to distribute or sell obscene materials. The personal constitutional rights of those like Stanley to possess and read obscenity in their homes and their freedom of mind and thought do not depend on whether the materials are obscene or whether obscenity is constitutionally protected. Their rights to have and view that material in private are independently saved by the Constitution.

Reidel is in a wholly different position. He has no complaints about governmental violations of his private thoughts or fantasies, but stands squarely on a claimed First Amendment right to do business in obscenity and use the mails in the process. But Roth has squarely placed obscenity and its distribution outside the reach of the First Amendment and they remain there today. Stanley did not overrule Roth and we decline to do so now.

A postscript is appropriate. Roth and like cases have interpreted the First Amendment not to insulate obscenity from statutory regulation. But the Amendment itself neither proscribes dealings in obscenity nor directs or suggests legislative oversight in this area. The relevant constitutional issues have arisen in the courts only because lawmakers having the exclusive legislative power have consistently insisted on making the distribution of obscenity a crime or otherwise regulating such materials and because the laws they pass are challenged as unconstitutional invasions of free speech and press.

It is urged that there is developing sentiment that adults should have complete freedom to produce, deal in, possess, and consume whatever communicative materials may appeal to them and that the law's involvement with obscenity should be limited to those situations where children are involved or where it is necessary to prevent imposition on unwilling recipients of whatever age. The concepts involved are said to be so elusive and the laws so inherently unenforceable without extravagant expenditures of time and effort by enforcement officers and the courts that basic reassessment is not only wise but essential. This may prove to be the desirable and eventual legislative course. But if it is, the task of restructuring the obscenity laws lies with those who pass, repeal, and amend statutes and ordinances. Roth and like cases pose no obstacle to such developments.

The judgment of the District Court is reversed.

So ordered.

Reversed.