Rowan v. United States Post Office Department

Rowan v. U. S. Post Office Dept.
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 22, 1970 Decided May 4, 1970
Full case name	Daniel Rowan, dba American Book Service, et al., Appellants, v. United States Post Office Department, et al.
Citations	397 U.S. 728 (more) 90 S. Ct. 1484; 25 L. Ed. 2d 736; 1970 U.S. LEXIS 44
Case history
Prior	300 F. Supp. 1036 (C.D. Cal. 1969); probable jurisdiction noted, 396 U.S. 885 (1969).
Holding
The addressee of postal mail has unreviewable discretion to decide whether to receive further material from a particular sender, and a vendor does not have a constitutional right to send unwanted material to an unreceptive addressee.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas John M. Harlan II · William J. Brennan Jr. Potter Stewart · Byron White Thurgood Marshall
Case opinions
Majority	Burger, joined by unanimous
Concurrence	Brennan, joined by Douglas
Laws applied
39 U.S.C. § 4009

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Rowan v. United States Post Office Department

Rowan v. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728 (1970), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that an addressee of postal mail has sole, complete, unfettered and unreviewable discretion to decide whether he or she wishes to receive further material from a particular sender, and that the sender does not have a constitutional right to send unwanted material into someone's home. It thus created a quasi-exception to free speech in cases in which a person is held as a "captive audience".^[1]