We’ll return to where things stand with the financial aspect of comics-related tariffs in my next post, but for this I want to respond to a question we’ve received several times in recent weeks: could we see a revival of prosecutions under the Comstock Act, the 19th century law prohibiting the mailing of obscene, immoral, indecent, and lewd material?
This question is particularly relevant not only because the U.S. Postal Service is aggressively using its power to open and inspect media mail packages, but also due to the increased scrutiny now being given to imports. A related statute under the Tariff Act of 1930 prohibits the importation of obscene or immoral material – the spirit of Comstock roams wide.
The core answer to the question is that the more attention that USPS staff, Customs inspectors, and shippers pay to container contents as a result of the still applicable global 10% reciprocal tariffs and the substantial tariffs on China, the greater the likelihood that certain material could get flagged.
You might have seen in the abortion context articles about legislation to repeal the Comstock Act. While these bills do remove prohibitions pertaining to the importation and mailing of abortion-related material and devices, their scope is more limited with regard to obscenity.
Instead of repealing the entire Comstock Act, these bills simply streamline prohibitions on obscene material to remove vestigial language (immoral, indecent, filthy, vile) that would already be treated as unconstitutional to the extent applied beyond the boundaries of obscenity. This includes the proposed amendment to the section from the Tariff Act of 1930 that prohibits importing obscene or immoral material – the phrase “or immoral” would be removed, but “obscene” would remain.
To my knowledge we have not seen an resurgence of Comstock-related prosecutions yet, but the issue is indeed on the CBLDF’s radar!