WOLSTON v. READER'S DIGEST ASSOCIATION, INC., et al.

Whether a permanent injunction as a remedy in a defamation action, preventing all future speech about an admitted public figure, violates the First Amendment.

Whether, consistent with the First Amendment, a public figure can recover libel damages from the publisher of an article that attributes altered quotations to the public figure.

Whether the First Amendment requires a separate "opinion" privilege that restricts the application of state libel laws.

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.

Can a public figure recover damages for emotional distress because of an offensive parody?

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.

Can a court, in the context of a summary judgment request, award summary judgment in a libel action if the moving party had no evidence that a reasonable jury might disbelieve its opponent's claim?

Was Consumer Union's article written with "actual malice," thereby placing it outside the First Amendment's freedom of speech protections?

Whether the First Amendment imposes limitations on a local school board's discretion to remove library books from high school and junior high school libraries, specifically when those removals are based on the board's disagreement with the books' content.

Whether a former CIA agent could be punished for publishing unclassified material, in violation of a government agreement, with an injunction and a trust on all future profits from his book.

To what extent does a publisher (monthly newsletter) have a constitutional privilege against liability for defamation of a private citizen?

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

Whether a teacher's dismissal by the Board of Education for publishing a letter in a newspaper critical of the Board's allocation of funds violated his freedom of speech under the First Amendment.

Are public figures subject to the actual malice standard for libel as articulated in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964)?

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

Whether a newspaper column asking a series of questions that could be read as defamatory is protected by the First Amendment, as articulated by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964).

Whether the freedom of speech provisions of the First and Fourteenth Amendments protect a criminal suspect who makes a false statement about a police officer without "actual malice."

Whether Alabama's libel laws unconstitutionally infringed on the First Amendment's freedom of speech and press protections.

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

Whether the distribution of a racist leaflet, in violation of a state criminal libel statute, was protected under the First Amendment.

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.