In Redrup v. New York, 1966, the U.S Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Kentucky bookseller who had been convicted for selling obscene material. The court held that the state could not constitutionally inhibit the distribution of literary material as 'obscene' unless it was utterly without redeeming social importance and that its dominant theme appealed to prurient interest in sex. This decision effectively nullified obscenity laws in several states including Kentucky, Arkansas and New York by establishing new standards for defining what constituted obscene materials. The ruling emphasized that only hardcore pornography could be suppressed under law while other sexually explicit but non-pornographic materials were protected under First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.

In the dissenting opinion for Redrup v. New York, Justice Harlan argued that obscenity should not be protected by the First Amendment and that states have a right to regulate it. He believed that there was no constitutional protection for "commercial exploitation of obscene literature" which he saw as having little social value. He also disagreed with the majority's view on community standards, arguing instead in favor of national standards when determining what is considered obscene material. Furthermore, he criticized his colleagues' approach to handling obscenity cases as being too vague and inconsistent, leading to confusion among lower courts about how they should handle such matters.