[2] After a campaign of harassment from the U.S. Post Office Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles Postmaster Otto Olesen declared the October 1954 issue "obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy" and therefore unmailable under the Comstock Act of 1873.

[4] The magazine, represented by a young attorney who had authored the cover story in the October 1954 issue, Eric Julber,[5] brought suit in U.S. District Court seeking an injunction against the Postmaster.

On January 13, 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court both accepted the case and, without hearing oral argument, issued a terse per curiam decision reversing the Ninth Circuit.

[8]On the same day, the court issued a similar per curiam decision also citing Roth in Sunshine Book Co. v. Summerfield, which concerned the distribution of two nudist magazines.

By protecting ONE, the Supreme Court facilitated the flourishing of a gay and lesbian culture and a sense of community" at the same time as the federal government was purging homosexuals from its ranks.