Rowan v. United States Post Office Department
25 L. Ed. 2d 736, 1970 U.S. LEXIS 44, 90 S. Ct. 1484 (1970)
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Rule of Law:
A federal statute allowing a homeowner to demand that a commercial sender cease all future mailings to their address, based on the homeowner's sole discretion that an initial advertisement was erotically arousing or sexually provocative, does not violate the sender's First Amendment free speech rights. A citizen's right to privacy in the home and to be let alone outweighs a mailer's right to communicate with an unwilling recipient.
Facts:
- A group of publishers, mail order houses, and mailing list brokers engaged in the business of sending unsolicited advertisements through the U.S. mail.
- Some recipients of these mailings found the advertisements to be offensive, lewd, and salacious.
- These recipients, exercising their rights under Title III of the Postal Revenue and Federal Salary Act of 1967 (39 U.S.C. § 4009), determined in their sole discretion that the advertisements were 'erotically arousing or sexually provocative.'
- The recipients notified the Postmaster General of their determination and requested that the senders be ordered to stop all future mailings to their homes.
- Pursuant to the statute, the Postmaster General issued prohibitory orders directing the mailers to remove the recipients' names from all their mailing lists and to refrain from sending any further mailings to those addresses.
- The mailers' business activities were negatively affected by having to comply with these prohibitory orders.
Procedural Posture:
- The mailers (appellants) filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, seeking a declaratory judgment that 39 U.S.C. § 4009 was unconstitutional.
- A three-judge District Court was convened to hear the constitutional challenge.
- The District Court upheld the statute as constitutional but interpreted it narrowly, ruling that it only prohibited mailers from sending future advertisements 'similar' to the one that prompted the initial complaint.
- The mailers (appellants) directly appealed the District Court's decision to the Supreme Court of the United States.
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Issue:
Does a federal statute, which permits a person to require a mailer to remove their name from all mailing lists and cease all future mailings to their home after receiving an advertisement they deem erotically arousing or sexually provocative, violate the mailer's First Amendment right to free speech or Fifth Amendment right to due process?
Opinions:
Majority - Mr. Chief Justice Burger
No, the statute does not violate the First or Fifth Amendments. The Court holds that a mailer's right to communicate must stop at the mailbox of an unreceptive addressee. The reasoning is that the right of every person 'to be let alone' in the sanctuary of their home outweighs a sender's right to communicate. Congress created a mechanism that vests the power to restrict mail not in a government censor, but in the individual citizen, giving the householder 'unreviewable discretion.' This is consistent with the traditional right of a homeowner to bar solicitors from their property. The statute does not violate due process because a sender is afforded a hearing before any sanction for non-compliance can be imposed, and the economic burden of removing names from a list does not amount to an unconstitutional taking.
Concurring - Mr. Justice Brennan
Yes, I agree that the statute is constitutional as applied to the addressee. However, the statute's provision allowing parents to block mail for their minor children up to age 19 raises potential constitutional difficulties. This could be used by parents to prevent older teenagers from receiving political or religious materials they wish to receive, implicating the children's own First Amendment rights. Because this specific issue was not presented in this case, the question of the right of older children to receive mail without parental interference is left open for a future case.
Analysis:
This decision establishes the primacy of an individual's right to privacy within their home over a sender's First Amendment right to communicate via unsolicited mail. By upholding a statute that gives homeowners 'unreviewable discretion' to block all mail from a specific sender, the Court affirmed a powerful 'captive audience' protection within the home. This case is significant because it allows for a content-based restriction on speech, but avoids government censorship by placing the decision-making power entirely in the hands of the private citizen. It creates a strong precedent for regulations designed to protect residential privacy from unwanted intrusions, which has been influential in later cases concerning telemarketing and other forms of direct advertising.
