![]() ![]() Instead, the Supreme Court overturned the decision of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California in Keene v. Meese (1986), the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the constitutionality of the government’s classification scheme, and the Supreme Court denied review. Barry Keene, a California senator, argued that the classification compelled him to choose between risking damage to his reputation for showing films identified as political propaganda or surrendering his First Amendment right to exhibit the films. Mitchell Block, sole distributor of one of the films, claimed infringement of the First Amendment right to disseminate ideas. Two lawsuits challenged the constitutionality of the designations on First Amendment grounds. In 1982 the Department of Justice classified three Canadian films, two concerning acid rain and a third examining the effects of nuclear war, as political propaganda. Wilson (1952), the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938 empowers the attorney general to categorize films and other communications produced by a foreign government for dissemination in the United States as “political propaganda.” Federal law let attorney general categorize foreign films as propagandaĪlthough films constitute protected speech according to the Court’s decision in Burstyn v. The Court held that the enabling statute at issue did not abridge, but enhanced, the First Amendment’s freedom of expression regarding the exhibition and content of films. 465 (1987), affirmed the authority of the federal government to classify, and to regulate the dissemination of, foreign political films. The Supreme Court’s 5-3 decision in Meese v. (Image via Wikimedia Commons, used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic) The Court held that the enabling statute at issue did not abridge, but enhanced, the First Amendment’s freedom of expression regarding the exhibition and content of films. In 1982 the Department of Justice classified three Canadian films, two concerning acid rain and a third examining the effects of nuclear war, as political propaganda. ![]() 465 (1987), affirmed the authority of the federal government to classify, and to regulate the dissemination of, foreign political films.
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