United States v. Thirty-seven Photographs, 402 U.S. 363 (1971), is a United States Supreme Court decision in an in rem case on procedures following the seizure of imported obscene material. A 6–3 court held that the federal statute governing the seizures was not in violation of the First Amendment as long as the government began forfeiture proceedings within 14 days of the seizure.
The case began with the seizure of the photographs, depicting various sexual positions, from Milton Luros, a Southern California publisher who was returning from Europe. He had intended to use them to illustrate a volume of the Kama Sutra, or failing that, to keep them for his own personal use. A district court panel, guided by the Court's Freedman v. Maryland decision of several years before, rejected his claims that the First Amendment allowed citizens to import obscene material, but found the statute unconstitutional due to the lack of time limits and ordered the Customs Service to return the images to Luros. The government appealed directly to the Supreme Court.
Justice Byron White wrote for the majority, distinguishing...
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