BROCKETT v. SPOKANE ARCADES, INC.

Legal Principle at Issue

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

Action

Reversed and remanded. Petitioning party received a favorable disposition.

Facts/Syllabus

A Washington statute declared any place to be a "moral nuisance" where "lewd films are publicly exhibited as a regular course of business" or "in which lewd publications constitute a principal part of the stock in trade." The statute provided that "lewd matter" is synonymous with "obscene matter" and defined these terms to mean anything which the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, when considered as a whole, "appeals to the prurient interest." "Prurient" is defined to mean "that which incites lasciviousness or lust."

Appellees — including various individuals and corporations who purvey sexually oriented books and movies — challenged the statute on First Amendment grounds in federal district court, seeking injunctive and declaratory relief. The district court rejected appellees' constitutional challenges. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, invalidating the statute in its entirety on its face on the ground that the definition of "prurient" as including "lust" was unconstitutionally overbroad in that it reached constitutionally protected material that merely stimulated normal sexual responses.