''One, Inc. v. Olesen'', 355 U.S. 371 (1958), was a landmark decision of the

US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...

for LGBT rights in the United States. It was the first U.S. Supreme Court ruling to deal with homosexuality and the first to address free speech rights with respect to homosexuality. The Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling that the gay magazine '' ONE'' violated obscenity laws, thus upholding constitutional protection for pro-homosexual writing.

Factual background

ONE, Inc. (now One Institute), a spinoff of the

Mattachine Society The Mattachine Society (), founded in 1950, was an early national gay rights organization in the United States, preceded by several covert and open organizations, such as Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Ha ...

, published the early pro-gay ''ONE: The Homosexual Magazine'' beginning in 1953. After a campaign of harassment from the U.S. Post Office Department and the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

, Los Angeles Postmaster Otto Olesen declared the October 1954 issue "obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy" and therefore unmailable under the Comstock Act of 1873. In that issue, the Post Office objected to "Sappho Remembered", a story of a lesbian's affection for a twenty-year-old "girl" who gives up her boyfriend to live with her, the lesbian, because it was "lustfully stimulating to the average homosexual reader"; "Lord Samuel and Lord Montagu", a poem about homosexual cruising that it said contained "filthy words"; and (3) an advertisement for ''The Circle'', a magazine containing homosexual pulp romance stories, that would direct the reader to other obscene material.

Procedural background

The magazine, represented by a young attorney who had authored the cover story in the October 1954 issue, Eric Julber, Julber's article was "You Can't Print It!", about how to steer clear of government censorship policies. He represented One, Inc. ''

pro bono ( English: 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. The term traditionally referred to provision of legal services by legal professionals for people who a ...

''. In 2015 he was 90 years old and living in

Carmel, California Carmel-by-the-Sea (), commonly known simply as Carmel, is a city in Monterey County, California, located on the Central Coast of California. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 3,220, down from 3,722 a ...

, with his wife. brought suit in U.S. District Court seeking an injunction against the Postmaster. In March 1956, U.S. District Judge Thurmond Clarke ruled for the defendant. He wrote: "The suggestion advanced that homosexuals should be recognized as a segment of our people and be accorded special privilege as a class is rejected." A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision unanimously in February 1957. Julber filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on June 13, 1957.

Decision by U.S. Supreme Court

On January 13, 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court both accepted the case and, without hearing oral argument, issued a terse '' per curiam'' decision reversing the Ninth Circuit. The decision, citing its June 24, 1957, landmark decision in '' Roth v. United States'' , read in its entirety:

Similar decision

On the same day, the court issued a similar ''per curiam'' decision also citing ''Roth'' in '' Sunshine Book Co. v. Summerfield'', which concerned the distribution of two nudist magazines.

Impact

''One, Inc. v. Olesen'' was the first U.S. Supreme Court ruling to deal with homosexuality and the first to address free speech rights with respect to homosexuality. The justices supporting the reversal were Frankfurter, Douglas, Clark, Harlan, and Whittaker. As an affirmation of ''Roth'', the case itself has proved most important for, in the words of one scholar, "its on-the-ground effects. By protecting ''ONE'', the Supreme Court facilitated the flourishing of a gay and lesbian culture and a sense of community" at the same time as the federal government was purging homosexuals from its ranks. In its next issue, ''ONE'' told its readers: "For the first time in American publishing history, a decision binding on every court now stands. ... affirming in effect that it is in no way proper to describe a love affair between two homosexuals as constitut(ing) obscenity."

References

External links

*
''One, Inc. v. Olesen'', Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, February 27, 1957

Homosexuality and Free Speech: The 1958 ONE Case
{{US1stAmendment Freedom of Speech Clause Supreme Court case law, state=collapsed United States LGBTQ rights case law United States obscenity case law United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Warren Court 1958 in United States case law 1950s in LGBTQ history