In Miller v. California, the Supreme Court revisited the issue of obscene speech. Business owner Marvin Miller mailed out a brochure advertising “adult” material depicting sexual activity. He was convicted under a California law that restricted the circulation of obscene content.

The Supreme Court supported the Roth v. United States precedent that obscene speech is not protected but also updated the guidelines from the decision. The court defined obscenity as material that lacks “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value” and established a three-prong test for identifying such content. Taken from the majority opinion by Chief Justice Warren Burger, the new obscenity test looks at “(a) whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”