Zacchini filed suit against Scripps-Howard in Ohio state court, alleging that the local reporter "showed and commercialized the film of his act without his consent," and that such conduct was an "unlawful appropriation of plaintiff's professional property."

[3]The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine whether the First and Fourteenth Amendments immunized respondent from damages for its alleged infringement of Zacchini's right of publicity under Ohio state law.

Moving on to the substantive constitutional issue of the case, White disagreed with the Ohio Supreme Court that the press should be privileged in showing Zacchini's entire act.

Time, Inc. v. Hill was a case which dealt with the tort of "false light", i.e. portraying a person in a misleading or embarrassing manner, rather than the appropriation of a performer's act or likeness, which was at stake there.

Hereafter, whenever a television news editor is unsure whether certain film footage received from a camera crew might be held to portray an "entire act," he may decline coverage – even of clearly newsworthy events – or confine the broadcast to watered-down verbal reporting, perhaps with an occasional still picture.

Stevens felt that it was not clear whether the Ohio Supreme Court was basing its holding purely on the boundaries of common law torts or the First Amendment.