In the case, Yetta Stromberg was convicted for displaying a red flag daily in the youth camp for children at which she worked, and was charged under the California law.

Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote for the seven-justice majority that the California statute was unconstitutional, and therefore Stromberg's conviction could not stand.

Olson, 283 U.S. 697 (1931), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court under which prior restraint on publication was found to violate freedom of the press as protected under the First Amendment.

Legal scholar and columnist Anthony Lewis called Near the Court's "first great press case".

[3] It was later a key precedent in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), in which the Court ruled against the Nixon administration's attempt to enjoin publication of the Pentagon Papers.