A civil proceeding initiated by the Massachusetts attorney general declared Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (more commonly known as Fanny Hill) to be obscene. The publisher, G. P. Putman, appealed and lost.
The feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States and other countries raised anew issues of discrimination and violence against women.
Congress passed the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 that, among other things, dealt with ‘‘virtual’’ pornographic images of minors.
Nude dancing as an issue in earlier cases occurred in the context of alcohol regulations, such as California v. LaRue (1972), or zoning laws as in Schad v. Mt. Ephraim (1981).
In a per curium decision, based on Redrup v. New York (1967), the Supreme Court disposed of Cain v. Kentucky and reversed Kentucky’s ban of public showings of the film ‘‘I, A Woman.’’
When a commercial activity requires a license or permit from a government, can a state use this authority to regulate ‘‘expression’’ even if aspects of the conduct do not meet the Roth standard of obscenity?