Also known as:lewdness · lewdly · lewdest · lewd conduct · open lewdness
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
Conduct or expression that is obscene or indecent and tends to moral impurity or wantonness.
Sources & Authorities· 3 primary sources
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Cases
Model Codes
Dictionaries
How it applies
Common Examples
6
Unlawful Entry Arrest at Vacant Townhouse
Officers entered a boarded townhouse owned by Capital Row Investments LLC after noise complaints. Inside they found Lily Lopez and thirty guests drinking, using drugs, and engaging in lewd conduct amid nearly empty rooms with no furniture or signs of authorized use. Harper offered only a vague story about an unnamed leasing agent and could produce no key or agreement. The officers arrested the group for unlawful entry on the basis of the premises condition and the observed behavior.
Obscenity Statute Applied to Mailed Materials
A distributor mailed catalogs containing patently offensive depictions of sexual acts and lewd exhibition of genitals to willing adult recipients. Prosecutors charged the distributor under a state obscenity statute that tracked the Miller examples of regulable material. The court upheld the conviction after confirming the materials lacked serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
A private citizen sued a magazine for publishing an article that falsely accused him of criminal lewd conduct. The court applied the Gertz standard and required the plaintiff to prove actual malice only if he qualified as a public figure. Because the plaintiff remained a private individual, the lower fault standard governed the defamation claim.
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc.418 U.S. 323, 94 S. Ct. 2997, 41 L. Ed. 2d 789 (1974)
Statutory Rape Gender Classification
A seventeen-year-old male was charged under California law for having sexual intercourse with a sixteen-year-old female. The defendant argued the statute unconstitutionally discriminated by gender. Justice Stewart's concurrence noted that the broader statutory scheme already criminalized lewd acts with minors by either sex and therefore the classification survived equal-protection review.
Michael M. v. Superior Court of Sonoma County450 U.S. 464, 477–479, 101 S.Ct. 1200, 1208–1209 (Stewart, J., concurring)
Prior Restraint on Lewd Publication
A state statute authorized injunctions against any newspaper regularly publishing lewd or lascivious content. The publisher challenged the statute as an unconstitutional prior restraint. The Court struck down the law because it suppressed future issues on the basis of past lewd publications rather than punishing specific issues after publication.
Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson283 U.S. 697 (1931)
Zoning Ordinance Targeting Adult Theaters
Detroit enacted ordinances that restricted the location of theaters exhibiting films emphasizing specified sexual activities or anatomical areas. Theater owners challenged the ordinances as content-based restrictions. The Court upheld the zoning rules because they regulated secondary effects of adult establishments rather than suppressing the lewd expression itself.
Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc.427 U.S. 50 (1976)
Common questions
Frequently Asked
2
How does lewd conduct help establish probable cause for unlawful entry?+
Officers may draw commonsense inferences from the condition of premises and the behavior of occupants. When partygoers occupy an apparently abandoned, nearly barren space while engaging in lewd conduct and drug use, those facts support a reasonable inference that the gathering is unauthorized.
What role does lewd speech play in school-discipline cases?+
Public schools may discipline students for lewd, indecent, or plainly offensive speech at school-sponsored events even if the speech is not obscene. School authorities have broad discretion to prohibit vulgar expression to teach students the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior.
418 U.S. 323, 94 S. Ct. 2997, 41 L. Ed. 2d 789 (1974)Torts
…of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or fighting' words—those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has…