In the 1951 case Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, the U.S Supreme Court ruled that motion pictures are a significant medium for communication of ideas and thus protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and expression. The court held that New York State could not ban "The Miracle," an Italian film it deemed to be sacrilegious under its education laws because such censorship violated constitutional protections on free speech rights. This decision overturned Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio (1915), which had previously determined films were purely commercial entertainment without First Amendment protection.

In the dissenting opinion for Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, Justice Felix Frankfurter argued that states should have the power to censor films if they are found to be "sacrilegious." He believed that movies were primarily a business and not a medium of expression protected by the First Amendment. According to him, it was within New York's rights as a state to regulate businesses in order to protect public welfare - including moral welfare - even if this meant restricting certain types of speech or expression deemed harmful or offensive. Furthermore, he contended that determining what constitutes sacrilege is not an impossible task beyond human competence; courts regularly make similar determinations about obscenity and libel laws.