Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469 (1975), was a United States Supreme Court case involving freedom of the press publishing public information.

[1] The Court held that both a Georgia statute prohibiting the release of a rape victim's name and its common-law privacy action counterpart were unconstitutional.

The trial court granted summary judgement to Cohn on both claims while rejecting Cox's 1st Amendment defense.

Upon rehearing, it also ruled that the Shield Law, and by implicit extension its interpretation of common-law right to privacy, was a "legitimate limitation on the right of freedom of expression contained in the First Amendment[]" and "[t]here simply is no public interest or general concern about the identity of the victim of such a crime as will make the right to disclose the identity of the victim rise to the level of First Amendment protection."

[citation needed] The Supreme Court ruled 8−1 in favor of Cox Broadcasting, holding Georgia's Shield Law and its common-law counterpart violated the First Amendment.

The majority held "[t]he freedom of the press to publish that information appears to us to be of critical importance to our type of government in which the citizenry is the final judge of the proper conduct of public business.