Cite as: 518 U. S. 727 (1996)
Opinion of Breyer, J.
screening authority. Cf. Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U. S. 489, 498 (1982) (citing Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U. S. 104, 108-109 (1972)) (vague laws may lead to arbitrary enforcement); Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U. S. 479, 486-487 (1965) (uncertainty may perniciously chill speech). That definition, however, uses language similar to language previously used by this Court for roughly similar purposes.
The provisions, as augmented by FCC regulations, permit cable system operators to prohibit
"programming that the cable operator reasonably believes describes or depicts sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner as measured by contemporary community standards." 1992 Act, § 10(a), 106 Stat. 1486.
See also 47 CFR § 76.702 (1995) (reading approximately the same definition into § 10(c)). This language is similar to language adopted by this Court in Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15, 24 (1973), as a "guidelin[e]" for identifying materials that States may constitutionally regulate as obscene. In Miller, the Court defined obscene sexual material (material that lacks First Amendment protection) in terms of
"(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest . . . ; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Ibid. (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted).
The language, while vague, attempts to identify the category of materials that Justice Stewart thought could be described only in terms of "I know it when I see it." Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U. S. 184, 197 (1964) (concurring opinion). In
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