American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression
Talking Points

 U.S. v. Stevens Threatens Free Speech Booksellers and Their Customers  

U.S. v. Stevens Could Open the Door to Broad Government Censorship.

In the early 20th century, Americans were sent to jail for criticizing America’s participation in World War I. Booksellers were imprisoned for selling classics like Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Beginning in the 1930s, the Supreme Court dramatically expanded the First Amendment, protecting all but a few categories of speech, e.g. libel, threats, obscenity and child pornography. In U.S. v. Stevens, the government is inviting the Supreme Court to once again expand unprotected speech beyond these narrow exceptions to include any material whose social value is less than the harm it causes. Who will decide what material has social value? Members of Congress and the state legislatures. If the Supreme Court endorses this dangerous idea of a balancing test to determine “valuable” speech, it will open the door to legislation restricting any material that the politicians and their constituents find offensive.
 

The Law Makes Booksellers Guess Which Books Have Serious Value.

In 1999, Congress approved a law making it a felony to create or sell a depiction of animal cruelty, including any photograph, film or audio recording of an animal being intentionally tortured or killed. The law includes an exemption for depiction that have “serious” value. However, this puts booksellers in the position of trying to guess at the value of particular books, which is a judgment that should be left to customers. The law also gives judges and juries wide discretion in defining serious value. In 2004, Robert Stevens was arrested for producing a video that included scenes of dogfighting in Japan, where it was legal. Although Stevens argued that his video was a documentary, the judge declared that it lacked “great import.” Stevens was sentenced to three years in jail.
 

The Law Bans More Than "Crush" Videos and Depictions of Animal Cruelty

The government is defending the 1999 law as a necessary step to ban the production of “crush” videos, a genre of fetish films that depicts small animals being crushed to death by women’s feet. However, the law applies to any depiction of an animal being injured, including books and magazines about bullfighting. It could also be turned against animal rights activists who attempt to shock the public with graphic depictions of slaughterhouse practices or the inhumane treatment of farm animals.