New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 (1982)

New York v. Ferber

No. 81-55

Argued April 27, 1982
Decided July 2, 1982
458 U.S. 747

CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEALS OF NEW YORK

Syllabus

A New York statute prohibits persons from knowingly promoting a sexual performance by a child under the age of 16 by distributing material which depicts such a performance. The statute defines "sexual performance" as any performance that includes sexual conduct by such a child, and "sexual conduct" is in turn defined as actual or simulated sexual intercourse, deviate sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality, masturbation, sado-masochistic abuse, or lewd exhibition of the genitals. Respondent bookstore proprietor was convicted under the statute for selling films depicting young boys masturbating, and the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court affirmed. The New York Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the statute violated the First Amendment as being both underinclusive and overbroad. The court reasoned that, in light of the explicit inclusion of an obscenity standard in a companion statute banning the knowing dissemination of similarly defined material, the statute in question could not be construed to include an obscenity standard, and therefore would prohibit the promotion of materials traditionally entitled to protection under the First Amendment.

Held: As applied to respondent and others who distribute similar material, the statute in question does not violate the First Amendment as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 753-774.

(a) The States are entitled to greater leeway in the regulation of pornographic depictions of children for the following reasons: (1) the legislative judgment that the use of children as subjects of pornographic materials is harmful to the physiological, emotional, and mental health of the child easily passes muster under the First Amendment; (2) the standard of Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, for determining what is legally obscene is not a satisfactory solution to the child pornography problem; (3) the advertising and selling of child pornography provide an economic motive for, and are thus an integral part of, the production of such materials, an activity illegal throughout the Nation; (4) the value of permitting live performances and photographic reproductions of children engaged in lewd exhibitions is exceedingly modest, if not de minimis; and (5) recognizing and classifying child pornography as a category of material outside the First Amendment’s protection is not incompatible with this Court’s decisions dealing with what speech is unprotected. When a definable class of material, such as that covered by the New York statute, bears so heavily and pervasively on the welfare of children engaged in its production, the balance of competing interests is clearly struck, and it is permissible to consider these materials as without the First Amendment’s protection. Pp. 756-764.

(b) The New York statute describes a category of material the production and distribution of which is not entitled to First Amendment protection. Accordingly, there is nothing unconstitutionally "underinclusive" about the statute, and the State is not barred by the First Amendment from prohibiting the distribution of such unprotected materials produced outside the State. Pp. 764-766.

(c) Nor is the New York statute unconstitutionally overbroad as forbidding the distribution of material with serious literary, scientific, or educational value. The substantial overbreadth rule of Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, applies. This is the paradigmatic case of a state statute whose legitimate reach dwarfs its arguably impermissible applications.

[W]hatever overbreadth may exist should be cured through case-by-case analysis of the fact situations to which [the statute’s] sanctions, assertedly, may not be applied.

Broadrick v. Oklahoma, supra, at 615-616. Pp. 766-774.

52 N.Y.2d 674, 422 N.E.2d 523, reversed and remanded.

WHITE, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and POWELL, REHNQUIST, and O’CONNOR, JJ., joined. O’CONNOR, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 774. BRENNAN, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which MARSHALL, J., joined, post, p. 775. BLACKMUN, J., concurred in the result. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 777.