On 29 August 1968, William Rabe, the manager of a drive-in movie theater in Richland, Washington, was arrested on obscenity charges for showing the film Carmen, Baby.

The Supreme Court reversed the conviction holding that the citizens of Washington had no notice under the Sixth Amendment that the place where a film was shown was an element of the offense.

The First Amendment puts protection for expressive content in terms that are both sweeping and absolute: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" [1] Despite this broad protection, the roots of U.S. attempts to legally suppress obscenity extend back to the English common law offense of obscene libel and censorship of stage plays by the Master of the Revels.

[2] American definitions of obscene material were variable and sporadic until 1879, when the test adopted in the English case Regina v. Hicklin (1868) was used in the prosecution of D. M. Bennett.

This test regarded all material tending "to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences" as obscene, regardless of its artistic or literary merit.

Under this test, works such as Honoré de Balzac's Contes Drolatiques, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, James Joyce's Ulysses,[a] and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover had all been subject to suppression under the federal Comstock Laws.

[5] In 1966, a trio of cases (Memoirs v. Massachusetts 383 U.S. 413, Ginzburg v. United States 383 U.S. 463 (1966), and Mishkin v. New York 383 U.S. 502 (1966)) provided the Court with an opportunity to create more clarity on these points.

[6] Justice Harlan even wrote in dissent that: "...no person, not even the most learned judge, much less a layman, is capable of knowing in advance... whether certain material comes within the area of "obscenity" as that term is confused by the Court today.

In Richland District Justice Court[b] he was convicted of "wrongfully and unlawfully caus[ing] to be exhibited an obscene, indecent and immoral show."

Since the Park Y Drive-In Theater's screen had twelve to fifteen homes and a major street within viewing distance, however, the Court found that it was obscene for those who had "lurid images" inflicted into the normal course of their daily lives.