In the 1966 case A Quantity of Copies of Books et al. v. Kansas, the U.S Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of book publishers and distributors who had their materials seized by law enforcement officials in Kansas on grounds that they were obscene. The court found that this seizure violated the First Amendment rights to free speech and press as well as Fourteenth Amendment due process protections because there was no prior judicial determination of obscenity before confiscation occurred. This ruling established an important precedent for future cases involving censorship, asserting that any material must be deemed legally obscene through proper legal channels before it can be suppressed or confiscated by authorities.

In the dissenting opinion for A Quantity of Copies of Books et al. v. Kansas, Justice Black argued that the majority's decision was a violation of First Amendment rights to free speech and press. He contended that it is not within the government's power to censor or suppress publications based on their content, regardless if they are deemed obscene or not. Furthermore, he expressed concern over giving judges rather than juries the authority to determine obscenity in seized materials as this could lead to potential abuses of power and subjective judgments about what constitutes obscenity. In his view, any form of prior restraint on publication is unconstitutional unless it poses a clear danger to national security.