Also known as: redeeming social value · social value · social importance
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A characteristic of expression that saves it from being deemed obscene and thus unprotected by the First Amendment. Expression possesses this quality when it conveys ideas or information of even slight value, including unorthodox or controversial viewpoints, unless it falls within a narrow category of more important competing interests.
Roland Rhodes, operations manager for a utility, kept lines energized to serve a hospital during an ice storm. A resulting fire damaged nearby property. In assessing negligence, the court weighed the high redeeming social importance of maintaining emergency power against the risk created.
Rita Russell, a triage nurse, prioritized a child with breathing distress over elderly patients reporting chest pain. One elderly patient later sued. The court examined whether the redeeming social importance of preserving the child's life justified the delay imposed on others.
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Ruby Rivera, a project supervisor, continued scaffolding operations despite wind warnings to meet a deadline. Debris fell and injured a pedestrian. The court balanced the redeeming social importance of timely construction against the invaded interest in safe passage on the sidewalk.
Ricardo Rojas, a production manager, implemented a faster mixing method to reduce emissions. The change increased splash risks to workers. The court evaluated the redeeming social importance of pollution reduction when deciding whether the conduct was reasonable.
Roberto Reyes's station aired an unedited monologue with graphic sexual language during school hours. Parents complained. The court considered whether the monologue's redeeming social importance as commentary on workplace issues shielded it from indecency sanctions.
Regina Robinson burned a cross on public property as political protest. The city cited her under a bias-motivated ordinance. The court assessed whether the expression carried redeeming social importance that placed it outside unprotected categories of speech.
Material is obscene and unprotected only if it appeals to prurient interest, depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and lacks redeeming social importance. The presence of even slight social value removes the material from the obscenity category and brings it within First Amendment protection.
Yes. All ideas possessing even the slightest redeeming social importance receive full protection unless they encroach on a limited area of more important interests. This principle excludes only obscenity, which the Court has treated as utterly without redeeming social importance.
Miller replaced the requirement that material be utterly without redeeming social value with a narrower focus on whether the work lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Serious value of this kind supplies the redeeming social importance that keeps material outside the obscenity exception.
Yes. Even protected expression may be subject to time, place, and manner restrictions or other narrowly tailored regulations that serve significant governmental interests. The redeeming social importance inquiry determines only whether the material falls outside all First Amendment protection as obscenity.
…democratic government must be preferred to a system in which each conscience is a law unto itself or in which judges weigh the social importance of all laws against the centrality of all religious beliefs. Because respondents’ ingestion of peyote was prohibited under Oregon law, and because that prohibition is…