prior restraint

noun

: governmental prohibition imposed on expression before the expression actually takes place

Examples of prior restraint in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

That lawsuit amounts to a request for a blatantly unconstitutional prior restraint. —Seth Stern, Orange County Register, 13 Feb. 2024

Enlarge Justin Sullivan / Staff | Getty Images North America On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to review an appeal from X (formerly Twitter), alleging that the US government's censorship of X transparency reports served as a prior restraint on the platform's speech and was unconstitutional. —Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica, 8 Jan. 2024

The Commission required that Mr. Musk subject himself to an unconstitutional prior restraint: preapproval of his material public communications about Tesla by a Tesla securities lawyer. —Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica, 3 Nov. 2023

Media and constitutional scholars have said the city’s arguments clearly call for an unconstitutional prior restraint on information that is already in the public domain and cannot possibly be retrieved. —Kevin Rector, Los Angeles Times, 5 Aug. 2023

Still, such a decision in favor of prior restraint is rare and worrisome, media advocates said. —Kevin Rector, Los Angeles Times, 5 Aug. 2023

Watson denied the claim about prior restraint, saying that no speech is stopped under the law. —Josh Snyder, Arkansas Online, 26 July 2023

The appeals court also rejected Musk’s prior restraint argument, saying parties entering consent decrees may voluntarily waive their First Amendment and other rights. —Larry Neumeister, Fortune, 15 May 2023

The Nixon administration quickly tried to block further publication on the grounds that the papers would compromise national security, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the newspapers on June 30, 1971, a landmark First Amendment ruling rejecting prior restraint. —Hillel Italie, Fortune, 16 June 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1833, in the meaning defined above

Legal Definition

prior restraint

noun

: governmental prohibition on expression (especially by publication) before the expression actually takes place see also Near v. Minnesota and New York Times Co. v. United States compare censorship, freedom of speech

Note: In New York Times Co. v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court restated its position that “any system of prior restraints” bears “a heavy presumption against constitutional validity” and that the government “carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint.”