POTOMAC NEWS CO. v. UNITED STATES

Does the PROTECT Act abridge First Amendment freedom of speech by prohibiting offers and requests of materials believed to be child pornography?

Whether the court of appeals properly barred enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act on First Amendment grounds because the statute relies on community standards to identify material that is harmful to minors.

Whether the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) induces public libraries to violate the 1st Amendment, thereby exceeding Congress's power under the Spending Clause by providing that a library that is otherwise eligible for special federal assistance for Internet access in the form of discount rates for educational purposes under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. 254(h), or grants under the Library Services and Technology Act, 20 U.S.C. 9121 et seq., may not receive that assistance unless the library has in place a policy that includes the operation of a technology protection measure on Internet-connected computers that protects against access by all persons to visual depictions that are obscene or child pornography, and that protects against access by minors to visual depictions that are harmful to minors, a condition of the receipt of federal funding.

Whether the "harmful to minors provisions" of the Child Online Protection Act violate the First Amendment.

Whether a city can justify a ban on multiple-use adult businesses by relying on a study that does not examine the harmful, secondary effects of those type of businesses.

Whether two sections of a law banning computer generated images of child pornography or pornography with adult actors appearing like children violates the First Amendment.

Whether a federal law requiring cable operators to "fully scramble" indecent and sexually explicit programming on adult stations violate the First Amendment.

Whether the city of Erie's ban on public nudity violates the First Amendment or is a valid exercise of the city's power to regulate harmful secondary effects associated with nude-dancing establishments.

Whether the provisions of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that prohibit the transmission of indecent and patently offensive materials to minors over the Internet violate the First Amendment.

Whether a state may constitutionally prohibit nude dancing in public places.

Whether the First Amendment prevents a state from imposing a sales tax on only selected segments of the media.

Whether an Ohio statute prohibiting the private possession or viewing of child pornography is overbroad and violates the First Amendment's free speech guarantees.

Whether a Florida statute prohibiting grand jury witnesses from disclosing his own testimoy after the grand jury's term has ended violates the First Amendment.

Whether a Dallas ordinance licensing "sexually oriented businesses" amounted to a prior restraint on protected expression, violating the First Amendment.

Whether First Amendment principles of academic freedom require a judicial finding of a specific need before peer review materials relating to discrimination charges are disclosed to the EEOC

Whether a California law banning indecent as well as obscene interstate commercial telephone messages violated the First Amendment's free speech guarantee

Whether a Massachusetts child pornography statute prohibiting adults from posing or exhibiting minors "in a state of nudity" was overbroad and violated the First Amendment.

Whether the seizure of a bookstore and its contents for selling obscene materials under RICO, with only "probable cause" was a form of prior restraint and violated the First Amendment.

Whether determining if a work is obscene requires an objective standard instead of "community standards" to constitutionally judge whether the material has "value."

Whether a city ordinance barring nude dancing in establishments licensed to sell liquor violated proprietors' First Amendment rights.

Whether school officials may prohibit a vulgar and lewd student speech at a student assembly even if the speech does not create a substantial disruption.

Whether the First Amendment bars enforcement of a statute authorizing closure of a premises found to be used as a place for prostitution and lewdness because the premises are also used as an adult bookstore.

Whether a qualified First Amendment right of access to criminal proceedings applied to preliminary hearings as conducted in California

Whether an appeals court erred in invalidating in its entirety a Washington statute aimed at preventing and punishing the publication of obscene materials.

Whether a newspaper involved in civil litigation has a First Amendment right to disseminate, in advance of trial, information gained through the pretrial discovery process.

Whether a "use tax" on the cost of paper and ink products consumed in the production of periodic publications violates the guaranted of the freedom of the press in the First Amendment.

Whether a New York criminal statute that prohibits persons from knowingly promoting sexual performances by children under the age of 16 by distributing material which depicts such performances violates the First Amendment.

Whether a New York statute barring topless dancing in venues licensed to serve liquor violates the First Amendment.

Whether a New Jersey ordinance prohibiting all live entertainment, including nonobscene nude dancing, was overbroad and violated rights of free expression guaranteed by the First Amendment

Whether the right of the public and press to attend criminal trials is guaranteed under the United States Constitution.

Whether a Texas statute authorizing injunctions against exhibition of obscene motions pictures violated the First Amendment's bar on prior restraints because it authorized temporary injunctions of indefinite duration.

Whether a broadcast of patently offensive words dealing with sex and excretion may be regulated because of its content.

Whether the news media have a constitutional right of access to a county jail, over and above that of other persons, to interview inmates and make sound recordings, films, and photographs for publication and broadcasting.

Whether a police search of a student newspaper, conducted pursuant to a warrant, violated the First Amendment when the information sought pertained to criminal investigations.

Whether court instructions in a case tried under pre-Miller guidelines could properly include children and sensitive persons within the defintion of the community by whose standards obscenity is to be judged.

Whether a Virginia statute criminalizing the publication of truthful information about judicial review proceedings violated the First Amendment's freedom of speech guarantee.

Whether the DC District Court should release to a broadcast company for broadcasting and sale to the public. tapes admitted into evidence at the trial of President Nixon's former advisers.

Whether a conviction for selling sado-masochistic materials under an Illinois obscenity statute violated the First Amendment because the statute was overbroad.

Whether "community standards" of the state of Iowa can be defined by state legislatures so as to be applicable in federal obscenity law.

Whether the standards announced in Miller v. California (1973) are to be applied retroactively to the potential detriment of a defendant in a criminal case.

Did a state trial judge, presiding over a widely publicized murder trial, violate the First Amendment when he entered an order which, as modified by the Nebraska Supreme Court, restrained petitioner newspaper, broadcasters, journalists, news media associations, and national newswire services from publishing or broadcasting accounts of confessions or admissions made by the accused to law enforcement officers or third parties, except members of the press, and other facts "strongly implicative" of the accused

Whether a zoning ordinance classification based on a difference between motion picture theaters which exhibit sexually explicit "adult" movies and those which do not is unconstitutional because it is based on the content of communication protected by the First Amendment.

Whether the prosecution of a bookseller charged with selling "obscene mailable matter" violated the First Amendment because the trial did not allow him to contest the obscenity of the magazines.

Whether a Florida ordinance making it a public nuisance and a punishable offense for a drive-in movie theater to exhibit films containing nudity, when the screen is visible from a public street or place, violates the First Amendment guarantee to freedom of speech and expression.

Whether the denial of a city facility for a production of "Hair" because it contained "obscene" conduct constituted a prior restraint and violated the First Amendment.

Did the Georgia law violate the freedom of the press as protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments?

Whether a Florida statute that afforded a right to reply to personal attacks on political candidates by newspapers violated the First Amendment.

Whether the film "Carnal Knowledge" was obscene and hence not entitled to the protection for free expression that is guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Whether a federal prison policy prohibiting newspaper interviews of individually designated inmates of federal prisons abridges the First Amendment's freedom of the press.

Whether a conviction under federal law banning mailing of obscene material failed to meet the "adequate notice" and "community standards" guidelines, among others, laid out in Miller v. California (1973).

Whether a California prison regulation barring media interviews with specific individual inmates infringed on the First Amendments' guarantees of speech and of the press.

Whether the seizure of a sexually explicit film and arrest of the theater's manager after the film was screened, with no prior adversary hearing, violated the First Amendment.

Whether RICO's forfeiture provisions constituted a prior restraint on speech and were overbroad thereby violating the First Amendment.

Whether, consistent with the First Amendment, unsolicited mass mailings to advertise books containing explicit pictures of sexual activities can be criminally prosecuted.

Whether a statute punishing knowing transportation of obscene material was overbroad because it failed to distinguish between public and nonpublic transportation, violating the First Amendment.

Whether the proprietor of an adult bookstore's conviction for selling a nonillustrated "obscene" book could be sustained under the First Amendment.

Whether a forfeiture of "obscene" movies under the Tariff Act. prohibiting the importation of obscene material, should be dismissed because the movies were for private use and possession only.

Whether a university that expelled a student for reprinting an offensive cartoon and a profane article headline in a campus newspaper violated the 1st Amendment.

Whether reporters can refuse to disclose sources to state grand juries.

Whether a Washington drive-in movie operator could be punished for violating obscenity laws because passersby and minors might be exposed to a movie which was obscene only "in the context of its exhibition."

Whether the New York Times and the Washington Post could be enjoined from publishing excerpts from a classified Defense Department study of U.S. involvement in the Indochina War. More broadly, whether the First Amendment protects the publication of "classified information."

Whether the seizure of 37 photographs by customs agents under a federal law prohibiting importation of obscene material violated the First Amendment.

Whether a federal law barring use of the mail for delivering obscene matter to persons over 21 was unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

Whether a federal statute allowing the postmaster general to censor obscene mailings lacked adequate safeguards to avoid inhibiting expression protected under the First Amendment.

Whether a statute under which an individual can require a mailer to stop all future mailings that the person "believes to be erotically arousing or sexually provocative" violates the mailer's rights of free speech and due process.

Whether the First Amendment prohibits criminal sanction for private possession of material deemed legally obscene.

Whether judge issuing warrant to seize allegedly obscene motion pictures acted using the proper constitutional safeguards when issuing such warrant.

Whether a New York statute prohibiting the sale of "magazines which would appeal to the lust of persons under the age of eighteen years" is unconstitutionally vague and violates the First Amendment.

Did the portion of New York Penal Law that made it unlawful to knowingly sell minors nude photos and magazines that contain such photos violate the 1st and 14th Amendments?

Whether the conviction of a New York newsstand clerk for selling two "obscene" paperback books violated First Amendment free speech guarantees.

Whether the book Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, commonly called Fanny Hill, is legally obscene.

Whether the conviction under New York law of a book distributor for possessing and publishing "obscene" books of sadism and masochism violated his freedom of speech.

Whether three publications that dealt openly with sexual matter were legally obscene under the Roth v. United States (1957) test and without First Amendment protection.

Whether the conviction of a manager of a movie theater for "possessing and exhibiting an allegedly obscene film" violated the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment.

Whether a state commission with broad discretion to define obscenity, and that allowed police enforcement of obscenity laws, was constitutional under the First Amendment.

Whether an injunction against the mailing of several "obscene" magazines featuring photos of nude male models violated the First Amendment.

Whether a Los Angeles city ordinance punishing the sales of books later determined to be obscene even if the bookseller did not know the contents of the book violated due process and free speech guarantees.

Whether a New York law denying licenses to show movies which "alluringly portrays adultery as proper behavior" is viewpont discrimination and violates the First Amendment.

"The dispositive question is whether obscenity is utterance within the area of protected speech and press."

Whether an injunction on sale of obscene booklets and destruction of such booklets amounted to prior restraint by the State, violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Whether a Michigan statute punishing sales of books "tending to the corruption of the morals of youth" is so vague as to violate the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause.

Whether an Ohio statute forbidding the commercial showing of any motion picture film without a license constitutes a prior restraint and is unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

Whether a New York statute prohibiting publications of violent materials "principally made up of criminal news, police reports, or accounts of criminal deeds, or pictures, or stories of deeds of bloodshed, lust or crime," is overly vague and violates the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Whether a citation for contempt of court could, consistent with the First Amendment, be upheld against a Corpus Christi newspaper which published critical news and commentary about a pending court case, even if that information was not entirely true.

Whether a citation for contempt of court against an editor of the Miami Herald for publishing two editorials critical of the court and its judges violated the First Amendment's free press guarantee.

Whether a Minnesota statute that allowed "abatement"—an injunction against future publication—of printed material deemed to be a public nuisance constituted an unconstitutional prior restraint in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Do the constitutional protections of freedom of expression, including those of the Ohio Constitution, extend to motion pictures?

Whether a post office regulation compelling newspapers to disclose the names and addresses of all editors and stockholders as well as circulation information, and to mark all paid material "advertisement" violates the First Amendment's free press guarantees.