Inc. v. Wilson Joseph Burstyn Commissioner of Education of New York etal. - Significance

This decision definitively established motion pictures as part of the "press" and therefore protected by the First Amendment. The decision condemned any use of religious notions as a means of making governmental decisions, and it also condemned vagueness in any language that concerned censorship.

In late 1950, an Italian film directed by world-famous director Roberto Rossellini and featuring the international star Anna Magnani opened at the Paris Theatre in New York. This was the unlikely beginning of one of the Supreme Court's key rulings on censorship, the film industry, and the separation of church and state.