Draft:Hoyt v. Minnesota

Hoyt v. Minnesota was a First Amendment case decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1970.

Melvin Hoyt and Joseph Lee were clerks at a bookstore. Hoyt was charged with having sold three obscene books on August 31, 1967, The Way of a Man with a Maid, Adam and Eve, and Business as Usual. Lee was charged with having sold two obscene books on January 8, 1968, Lady Susan's Cruel Lover and True Love Stories of Growing Up. The sales were deemed to be in violation of Minnesota Statute 617.241, and both defendants were found guilty of selling obscene materials, each being fined the maximum $100 under the statute. The cases were consolidated on appeal.

"Decided June 29, 1970

Certiorari granted; 286 Minn. 92, 174 N.W.2d 700, reversed.

PER CURIAM.

The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted and the judgment is reversed, Redrup v. New York, 386 U.S. 767.

MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE HARLAN join, dissenting.

I am not persuaded that the First and Fourteenth Amendments necessarily prescribe a national and uniform measure - rather than one capable of some flexibility and resting on concepts of reasonableness - of what each of our several States constitutionally may do to regulate obscene products within its borders.

Here a Minnesota trial court (just as the Ohio trial court did in Walker v. Ohio, 398 U.S. 434 (1970)), endeavored to apply standards articulated by this Court in prior cases, and embodied in a precisely worded Minnesota statute, and reached the conclusion that the materials in question were obscene within the meaning of that statutory definition. Six of the seven Justices of the Supreme Court of that State, citing Redrup v. New York, 386 U.S. 767 (1967), and other decisions of this Court, have identified the offending material "for what it is," have described it as dealing "with filth for the sake of filth," and have held it obscene as a matter of law. 286 Minn. 92, 95, 174 N.W.2d 700, 702. I cannot agree that the Minnesota trial court and those six justices are so obviously misguided in their holding that

Page 399 U.S. 524, 525

they are to be summarily reversed on the authority of Redrup.

At this still, for me, unsettled stage in the development of state law of obscenity in the federal constitutional context I find myself generally in accord with the views expressed by MR. JUSTICE HARLAN in Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 496, 500-503 (1957); Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 203-204 (1964); and Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413, 455, 458-460 (1966), and with those enunciated by THE CHIEF JUSTICE in Cain v. Kentucky, 397 U.S. 319 (1970), and in Walker v. Ohio, supra."

Category:United States Supreme Court cases Category:1970 in United States case law


 * This open draft remains in progress as of July 5, 2023.