United States v. Stevens

United States v. Stevens
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 6, 2009 Decided April 20, 2010
Full case name	United States v. Robert J. Stevens
Docket no.	08-769
Case history
Prior	Motion to dismiss denied, No. 2:04-cr-00051-ANB (W.D. Pa. Nov. 10, 2004); defendant convicted; vacated, 533 F.3d 218 (3d Cir. 2008); cert. granted, 556 U.S. 1181 (2010).
Holding
Depictions of animal cruelty are not categorically unprotected by the First Amendment.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer Samuel Alito · Sonia Sotomayor
Case opinions
Majority	Roberts, joined by Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor
Dissent	Alito
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I; 18 U.S.C. § 48

United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that 18 U.S.C. § 48,^[1] a federal statute criminalizing the commercial production, sale, or possession of depictions of cruelty to animals, was an unconstitutional abridgment of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

After this ruling, the statute was revised by the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act of 2010 to have much more specific language indicating it was intended only to apply to "crush videos."