Near v. Minnesota

Near v. Minnesota
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 30, 1930 Decided June 1, 1931
Full case name	J. M. Near v. Minnesota, ex rel. Floyd B. Olson, County Attorney, Hennepin County, Minnesota
Citations	283 U.S. 697 (more) 51 S. Ct. 625; 75 L. Ed. 1357; 1931 U.S. LEXIS 175; 1 Media L. Rep. 1001
Case history
Prior	Temporary injunction granted, 11-27-27; defendants' demurrer denied, State ex rel. Olson v. Guilford, Hennepin County District Court; affirmed, 219 N.W. 770 (Minn. 1928); judgment and injunction for plaintiffs, Hennepin County District Court; affirmed, 228 N.W. 326 (Minn. 1929)
Subsequent	None
Holding
A Minnesota law that imposed permanent injunctions against the publication of newspapers with "malicious, scandalous, and defamatory" content violated the First Amendment, as applied to the states by the Fourteenth.
Court membership
Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes Associate Justices Oliver W. Holmes Jr. · Willis Van Devanter James C. McReynolds · Louis Brandeis George Sutherland · Pierce Butler Harlan F. Stone · Owen Roberts
Case opinions
Majority	Hughes, joined by Holmes, Brandeis, Stone, Roberts
Dissent	Butler, joined by Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV; Minn. Stat. §§ 10123-1 to 10123-3 (1925)

Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court under which prior restraint on publication was found to violate freedom of the press as protected under the First Amendment. This principle was applied to free speech generally in subsequent jurisprudence.^[1] The Court ruled that a Minnesota law that targeted publishers of "malicious" or "scandalous" newspapers violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (as applied through the Fourteenth Amendment).^[2] Legal scholar and columnist Anthony Lewis called Near the Court's "first great press case".^[3]

It was later a key precedent in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), in which the Court ruled against the Nixon administration's attempt to enjoin publication of the Pentagon Papers.^[4]