Freedman v. Maryland

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Freedman v. Maryland" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Freedman v. Maryland
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 19, 1964 Decided March 1, 1965
Full case name	Freedman v. Maryland
Citations	380 U.S. 51 (more) 85 S. Ct. 734; 13 L. Ed. 2d 649; 1965 U.S. LEXIS 1732; 1 Media L. Rep. 1126
Holding
The Maryland law is unconstitutional, since it provides the danger of unduly suppressing protected expression.
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas Tom C. Clark · John M. Harlan II William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart Byron White · Arthur Goldberg
Case opinions
Majority	Brennan, joined by unanimous
Concurrence	Douglas, joined by Black

Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 51 (1965), was a United States Supreme Court case that ended government-operated rating boards with a decision that a rating board could only approve a film and had no power to ban a film. The ruling also concluded that a rating board must either approve a film within a reasonable time, or go to court to stop a film from being shown in theatres. Other court cases determined that television stations are federally licensed, so local rating boards have no jurisdiction over films shown on television. When the movie industry set up its own rating system—the Motion Picture Association of America—most state and local boards ceased operating.^[1]