City of Moline v. Walker

274 N.E.2d 9, 49 Ill. 2d 392, 1971 Ill. LEXIS 327
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedSeptember 30, 1971
Docket43744
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 274 N.E.2d 9 (City of Moline v. Walker) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Moline v. Walker, 274 N.E.2d 9, 49 Ill. 2d 392, 1971 Ill. LEXIS 327 (Ill. 1971).

Opinion

MR. JUSTICE DAVIS

delivered the opinion of the court:

The defendant, Larry Walker, was arrested and charged on three different occasions in April, 1970, with selling books in violation of the obscenity ordinance of the City of Moline. Counsel for the defendant filed an identical motion to dismiss each of three complaints.

Apparently, the cases were consolidated for the purpose of hearing the motions, and initially, all three motions were denied. Upon rehearing, the court entered identical orders dismissing all of the complaints, wherein it found and ordered:

“1. That the City of Moline is _ unlawfully trying to limit the matters that citizens may read.
2. That the sale of obscenity to an adult is now within the protection of the First Amendment.
IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED, that the Complaints of the City of Moline, Illinois be dismissed, and that the defendant be discharged and his bail be returned.”

The City has appealed the dismissal of the complaints, which are consolidated here in one appeal.

Threshold questions emerge in that the defendant’s counsel denies that the court ruled the ordinance in question unconstitutional, and asserts that the orders of dismissal appealed from were not final and appealable. While the orders did not specifically find the ordinance unconstitutional, nevertheless, the intent and meaning of the findings can be construed in no other way, and they were final and appealable. (Village of Niles v. Szczesny, 13 Ill.2d 45, 47, 48.) Consequently, the jurisdiction of this court was properly invoked.

The defendant attacks the constitutionality of that section of the ordinance which defines obscenity. It provides:

“Section 2. A thing is obscene for purposes of this Ordinance when to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interests; that is,
a) That the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex, and
b) The material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of the sexual nature, and
c) The material is utterly without redeeming social value.”

He asserts that this definition is faulty because it omits three additional criteria enunciated in Redrup v. New York, 386 U.S. 767, 769, 18 L.Ed.2d 515, 517, 87 S.Ct. 1414, to-wit: “In none of the cases was there a claim that the statute in question reflected a specific and limited state concern for juveniles. See Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 88 L.Ed. 645, 64 S.Ct. 438; cf. Butler v. Michigan, 352 U.S. 380, 1 L.Ed.2d 412, 77 S.Ct. 524. In none was there any suggestion of an assault upon individual privacy by publication in a manner so obstrusive as to make it impossible for an unwilling individual to avoid exposure to it. Cf. Breard v. Alexandria, 341 U.S. 622, 95 L.Ed. 1233, 71 S.Ct. 920, 35 A.L.R.2d 335; Public Utilities Comm’n v. Poliak, 343 U.S. 451, 96 L.Ed. 1068, 72 S.Ct. 813. And in none was there evidence of the sort of ‘pandering’ which the Court found significant in Ginzburg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463, 16 L.Ed.2d 31, 86 S.Ct. 942.”

In United States v. Reidel, 402 U.S. 351, 28 L.Ed.2d 813, 91 S.Ct. 1410, the Supreme Court rejected the very restrictions which the defendant insists must be incorporated in statutory definitions of obscenity. There the defendant had been indicted under section 1461 of Title 18, U.S.C., which prohibits the knowing use of the mails for delivery of obscene matter. The defendant challenged the constitutionality of the statute on the grounds that it failed to protect distribution of obscene materials to willing recipients, who state they are adults. In upholding this statute, the United States Supreme Court distinguished its earlier decisions of Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498, 77 S.Ct. 1304, and Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 22 L.Ed.2d 542, 89 S.Ct. 1243, which the defendant herein has cited and which are relevant to our determination of the issue at bar. The court, in Reidel, stated at 402 U.S. 351, 355: “The District Court gave Stanley too wide a sweep. To extrapolate from Stanley’s right to have and peruse obscene material in the privacy of his own home a First Amendment right in Reidel to sell it to him would effectively scuttle Roth, the precise result that the Stanley opinion abjured. Whatever the scope of the ‘right to receive’ referred to in Stanley, it is not so broad as to immunize the dealings in obscenity in which Reidel engaged here — dealings which Roth held unprotected by the First Amendment.”

In Reidel the court noted that the district court had ignored Roth and the express limitations of Stanley, had relied on the language of Stanley that “the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas *** regardless of their social worth,” (394 U.S. at 564), and from these words had reasoned that “if a person has the right to receive and possess this material, then someone must have the right to deliver it to him.” Under this rationalization, the district court concluded that section 1461 could not be validly applied “where obscene material is not directed at children, or it is not directed at an unwilling public, where the material such as in this case is solicited by adults ***.”

Mr. Justice Harlan, in his concurring opinion in Reidel, stated: “The Court today correctly rejects the contention that the recognition in Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 22 L.Ed.2d 542, 89 S.Ct. 1243 (1969), that private possession of obscene materials is constitutionally privileged under the First Amendment carried with it a ‘right to receive’ such materials through any modes of distribution as long as adequate precautions are taken to prevent the dissemination to unconsenting adults and children.” 402 U.S. at 357-58. Also see: Gable v. Jenkins (D.C.Ga. 1969), 309 F. Supp. 998, 1000, 1001.

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Bluebook (online)
274 N.E.2d 9, 49 Ill. 2d 392, 1971 Ill. LEXIS 327, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-moline-v-walker-ill-1971.