ABSTRACT
In American Booksellers Association, Inc. v. Hudnut, 771 F.2d 323, a federal appeals court invalidated an Indianapolis antipornography ordinance. The American Booksellers Association and other book, magazine, and film distributors and readers challenged the ordinance in US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on the basis that it violated their First Amendment rights. Indianapolis justified the ordinance on the theory that pornography affects men's thoughts and harms women. The district court declared the ordinance unconstitutional because it regulated the content of speech. Such regulation can be justified only by demonstrating a compelling state interest in reducing sex discrimination, and Indianapolis did not demonstrate such a compelling interest. In 1984 the Indianapolis-Marion County City-County Council passed an ordinance that outlawed pornography based on the Dworkin-MacKinnon definition, as the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women, presenting women as sex objects or as enjoying pain, humiliation, or servility.
