Also known as: redeeming social value · social value · social importance
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A characteristic of expression that saves it from being deemed obscene and thus unprotected by the First Amendment. Expression possesses this quality when it conveys ideas or information of even slight value, including unorthodox or controversial viewpoints, unless it falls within a narrow category of more important competing interests.
Roland Rhodes, operations manager for a utility, kept lines energized to serve a hospital during an ice storm. A resulting fire damaged nearby property. In assessing negligence, the court weighed the high redeeming social importance of maintaining emergency power against the risk created.
Rita Russell, a triage nurse, prioritized a child with breathing distress over elderly patients reporting chest pain. One elderly patient later sued. The court examined whether the redeeming social importance of preserving the child's life justified the delay imposed on others.
Ruby Rivera, a project supervisor, continued scaffolding operations despite wind warnings to meet a deadline. Debris fell and injured a pedestrian. The court balanced the redeeming social importance of timely construction against the invaded interest in safe passage on the sidewalk.
Ricardo Rojas, a production manager, implemented a faster mixing method to reduce emissions. The change increased splash risks to workers. The court evaluated the redeeming social importance of pollution reduction when deciding whether the conduct was reasonable.
Roberto Reyes's station aired an unedited monologue with graphic sexual language during school hours. Parents complained. The court considered whether the monologue's redeeming social importance as commentary on workplace issues shielded it from indecency sanctions.
In 1973, comedian George Carlin recorded a twelve-minute monologue titled "Filthy Words" before a live audience in a California theater. The recording consisted of Carlin discussing and repeating seven words he identified as ones that could not be said on public airwaves, delivered in a satirical manner that elicited laughter from the audience. On October 30, 1973, at approximately 2:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, radio station WBAI in New York, owned by respondent Pacifica Foundation, broadcast the monologue as part of a program examining contemporary society's attitudes toward language. Prior to the broadcast, the station warned listeners that the program contained sensitive language that might be offensive to some. A few weeks after the broadcast, a man who had heard the program while driving with his young son wrote a letter of complaint to the Federal Communications Commission. The complainant stated that, although he could perhaps understand the "record's being sold for private use, I certainly cannot understand the broadcast of same over the air that, supposedly, you control." The Commission forwarded the complaint to Pacifica for comment. In its response, Pacifica explained the context of the broadcast as a serious examination of language by a noted social satirist and noted that it had received no other complaints. On February 21, 1975, the Commission issued a declaratory order finding that the broadcast was indecent under 18 U.S.C. § 1464 and stating that the order would be placed in the station's license file for consideration in future proceedings. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed the Commission's order. The Supreme Court granted the Commission's petition for a writ of certiorari to review the decision.
View caseRegina Robinson burned a cross on public property as political protest. The city cited her under a bias-motivated ordinance. The court assessed whether the expression carried redeeming social importance that placed it outside unprotected categories of speech.
In the predawn hours of June 21, 1990, petitioner R.A.V., then a juvenile, and several other teenagers assembled a crudely made cross by taping together broken chair legs and burned the cross inside the fenced yard of a black family that lived across the street from the house where R.A.V. was staying. Although this conduct could have been punished under several Minnesota statutes carrying significant penalties, the City of St. Paul chose to charge R.A.V. under the St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance. The ordinance provides that whoever places on public or private property a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graffiti, including but not limited to a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender commits disorderly conduct and shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. R.A.V. moved to dismiss the charge on the ground that the ordinance was substantially overbroad and impermissibly content-based and therefore facially invalid under the First Amendment, and the trial court granted the motion. The Minnesota Supreme Court reversed, construing the ordinance to reach only fighting words and concluding that it was not impermissibly content-based. This Court granted certiorari.
View caseMaterial is obscene and unprotected only if it appeals to prurient interest, depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and lacks redeeming social importance. The presence of even slight social value removes the material from the obscenity category and brings it within First Amendment protection.
Yes. All ideas possessing even the slightest redeeming social importance receive full protection unless they encroach on a limited area of more important interests. This principle excludes only obscenity, which the Court has treated as utterly without redeeming social importance.
Miller replaced the requirement that material be utterly without redeeming social value with a narrower focus on whether the work lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Serious value of this kind supplies the redeeming social importance that keeps material outside the obscenity exception.
Yes. Even protected expression may be subject to time, place, and manner restrictions or other narrowly tailored regulations that serve significant governmental interests. The redeeming social importance inquiry determines only whether the material falls outside all First Amendment protection as obscenity.
…democratic government must be preferred to a system in which each conscience is a law unto itself or in which judges weigh the social importance of all laws against the centrality of all religious beliefs. Because respondents’ ingestion of peyote was prohibited under Oregon law, and because that prohibition is…