Mutual Film Corporation of Missouri v. George H. Hodges

Citations

• 236 U.S. 248
• 35 S. Ct. 393
• 59 L. Ed. 561
• 1915 U.S. LEXIS 1757

Syllabus

<p>Mutual Film, Corporation v. Ohio Industrial Board, ante, p. 230, followed to the effect that state statutes imposing Censorship on moving pictures, such as those of Ohio and Kansas of 1913, are valid exercises of the police power of those States, respectively, and do not interfere with interstate commerce, abridge the liberty of opinion, or delegate legislative power to administrative officers.</p> <p>One who is not within the class specified in a state police statute as liable to penalties for violation thereof has no standing to attack the statute as unconstitutional.</p> <p>One who simply imports moving pictures into a State and does not exhibit them has no standing to attack a statute subjecting only exhibitors or those permitting exhibitions to its penalties; nor can he, by asserting constitutional rights, enlarge the character of the statute and make it an interference with interstate commerce when it is a mere exercise of the police power of the State upon things already within it. Savage v. Jones, 225 U. S. 501, distinguished.</p> <p>The fact that an exchange for moving, pictures can more conveniently subject the films to censorship than the exhibitors can, does not give the non-exhibiting owner of an exchange a standing to attack the statute as to matters which affect only exhibitors.</p>