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Constitutional Law Keyed to Stone
Sable Communications v. FCC
Citation:
492 U.S. 115 (1989)Facts
In 1983, Sable Communications began offering sexually oriented prerecorded telephone messages, known as “dial-a-porn,” through the Pacific Bell telephone network. Callers were charged a special fee that was collected by Pacific Bell and divided between the phone company and Sable. In 1988, Congress amended § 223(b) of the Communications Act to impose a complete ban on both obscene and indecent interstate commercial telephone messages, regardless of the recipient’s age. This amendment eliminated previous FCC regulations that had allowed such services to operate with certain restrictions designed to prevent access by minors, such as credit card payment requirements, access codes, and message scrambling. Sable brought suit challenging the constitutionality of both the obscenity and indecency provisions of the amended statute. The District Court upheld the ban on obscene messages but struck down the ban on indecent messages as overbroad and unconstitutional. Both Sable and the federal government appealed directly to the Supreme Court.
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