Censorship in the United States

The right to free speech is a long-standing US tradition, but actually respecting the right to free speech is not. According to the ACLU, censorship is "the suppression of words, images or ideas that are "offensive," and it happens "whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others." Our freedom of expression may be limited, says the ACLU, "only if it will clearly cause direct and imminent harm to an important societal interest."

1798: John Adams Gets Revenge on His Critics

Public domain. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

"Old, querulous, Bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams," one supporter of challenger Thomas Jefferson called the incumbent president. But Adams got the last laugh, signing a bill in 1798 that made it illegal to criticize a government official without backing up one's criticisms in court. Twenty-five people were arrested under the law, though Jefferson pardoned its victims after he defeated Adams in the 1800 election.

Later sedition acts focused primarily on punishing those who advocated civil disobedience. The Sedition Act of 1918, for example, targeted draft resisters.

1821: The Longest Ban in US History

Fanny Hill Illustration
Illustration by Édouard-Henri Avril. Public domain. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The bawdy novel ​"Fanny Hill" (1748), written by John Cleland as an exercise in what he imagined a prostitute's memoirs might sound like, was no doubt familiar to the Founding Fathers; we know that Benjamin Franklin, who himself wrote some fairly risque material, had a copy. But later generations were less latitudinarian.

The book holds the record for being banned longer than any other literary work in the United States--prohibited in 1821, and not legally published until the US Supreme Court overturned the ban in Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966). Of course, once it was legal it lost much of its appeal; by 1966 standards, nothing written in 1748 was liable to shock anybody.

1873: Anthony Comstock, Mad Censor of New York

Anthony Comstock
Public domain. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

If you're looking for a clear-cut villain in the history of US censorship, you've found him.

In 1872, feminist Victoria Woodhull published an account of an affair between a celebrity evangelical minister and one of his parishioners. Comstock, who despised feminists, requested a copy of the book under a fake name, then reported Woodhull and had her arrested on obscenity charges.

He soon became head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, where he successfully campaigned for an 1873 federal obscenity law, commonly referred to as the Comstock Act, that allowed warrantless searches of the mail for "obscene" materials.

Comstock later boasted that during his career as censor, his work led to the suicides of 15 alleged "smut-peddlers."

1921: The Strange Odyssey of Joyce's Ulysses

James Joyce's "Ulysses" (1921)
Public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice successfully blocked the publication of James Joyce's "Ulysses" in 1921, citing a relatively tame masturbation scene as proof of obscenity. US publication was finally permitted in 1933 following the US District Court ruling United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, in which Judge John Woolsey found that the book was not obscene and essentially established artistic merit as an affirmative defense against obscenity charges.

1930: The Hays Code Takes on Movie Gangsters, Adulterers

Cary Grant and Mae West
Cary Grant and Mae West in "I'm No Angel" (1933), the steamy film that helped inspire the Hays Code. Public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Hays Code was never enforced by the government--it was voluntarily agreed upon by film distributors--but the threat of government censorship made it necessary. The US Supreme Court had already ruled in Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio (1915) that movies were not protected by the First Amendment, and some foreign films had been seized on obscenity charges. The film industry adopted the Hays Code as a means of avoiding outright federal censorship.

The Hays Code, which regulated the industry from 1930 until 1968, banned what you might expect it to ban--violence, sex and profanity--but it also prohibited portrayals of interracial or same-sex relationships, as well as any content that was deemed anti-religious or anti-Christian.

1954: Making Comic Books Kid-Friendly (and Bland)

Photo: Chris Hondros / Getty Images.

Like the Hays Code, the Comics Code Authority (CCA) is a voluntary industry standard. Because comics are still primarily read by children--and because it has historically been less binding on retailers than the Hays Code was on distributors--the CCA is less dangerous than its film counterpart. This may be why it is still in use today, though most comic book publishers ignore it and no longer submit material for CCA approval.

The driving force behind the CCA was the fear that violent, dirty or otherwise questionable comics might turn children into juvenile delinquents--the central thesis of Frederic Wertham's 1954 bestseller "Seduction of the Innocent" (which also argued, less credibly, that the Batman-Robin relationship might turn children gay).

1959: Lady Chatterley's Moratorium

Senator Reed Smoot
Public domain. Photo: Library of Congress.

Although Senator Reed Smoot admitted that he had not read D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (1928), he expressed strong opinions about the book. "It is most damnable!" he complained in a 1930 speech. "It is written by a man with a diseased mind and a soul so black that he would obscure even the darkness of hell!"

Lawrence's odd story about an adulterous affair between Constance Chatterley and her husband's servant was so offensive because, at the time, non-tragic portrayals of adultery were, for practical purposes, nonexistent. The Hays Code banned them from films, and federal censors banned them from print media.

A 1959 federal obscenity trial lifted the ban on the book, now recognized as a classic.

1971: The New York Times Takes on the Pentagon and Wins

Vietnam Protest
Public domain. Photo: U.S. Department of Defense.

The massive military study titled "United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense," later known as the Pentagon Papers, was supposed to be classified. But when excerpts of the document were leaked to The New York Times in 1971, which published them, all hell broke loose--with President Richard Nixon threatening to have journalists indicted for treason, and federal prosecutors attempting to block further publication. (They had reason to do so. The documents revealed that US leaders had--among other things--specifically taken measures to prolong and escalate the unpopular war.)

In June 1971, the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Times could legally publish the Pentagon Papers.

1973: Obscenity Defined

Chief Justice Warren Burger
Public domain. Photo: Library of Congress.

A 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Warren Burger, outlined the current definition of obscenity in Miller v. California (1973), a mail-order porn case, as follows:

  • the average person must find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;

While the Supreme Court has held since 1897 that the First Amendment does not protect obscenity, the relatively small number of obscenity prosecutions in recent years suggests otherwise.

1978: The Indecency Standard

George Carlin in Concert
Photo: © Kevin Armstrong. Licensed under GFDL version 1.2. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

When George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" routine was aired on a New York radio station in 1973, a father listening to the station complained to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC, in turn, wrote the station a firm letter of reprimand.

The station challenged the reprimand, ultimately leading to the Supreme Court's landmark FCC v. Pacifica (1978) in which the Court held that material that is "indecent," but not necessarily obscene, may be regulated by the FCC if it is distributed through publicly owned wavelengths.

Indecency, as defined by the FCC, refers to "language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities."

1996: The Communications Decency Act of 1996

EFF Blue Ribbon Campaign Logo
© Electronic Frontier Foundation. Licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0.

The Communications Decency Act of 1996 mandated a federal prison sentence of up to two years for anyone who knowingly "uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs."

The Supreme Court mercifully struck the act down in ACLU v. Reno (1997), but the concept of the bill was revived with the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) of 1998, which criminalized any content deemed "harmful to minors." Courts immediately blocked COPA, which was formally struck down in 2009.

2004: The FCC Meltdown

Jackson and Timberlake
Photo: Frank Micelotta / Getty Images.

During the live broadcast of the Super Bowl halftime show on February 1, 2004, Janet Jackson's right breast was slightly exposed; the FCC responded to an organized campaign by enforcing indecency standards more aggressively than it ever had before. Soon every expletive uttered at an awards show, every bit of nudity (even pixelated nudity) on reality television and every other potentially offensive act became a possible target of FCC scrutiny.

2017: Online Censorship

When the Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act in Reno vs. ACLU in 1997, it was a strong victory for free speech rights and a glorious upholding of the First Amendment regarding cyberspace.

But according to the ACLU, at least 13 states have passed online censorship legislation since 1995 (several of which the ACLU has struck down), and many state censorship laws violate the First Amendment.

Columbia Journalism Review argues that "new technologies make it more difficult, and ultimately impossible, for governments to control the flow of information. Some have argued that the birth of the internet foreshadowed the death of censorship. " But that isn't the case, and censorship is being used by the government in an intimidating manner against social media, print media and in the flow of online information.