If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.

This line is from Justice Thurgood Marshall’s opinion in a U.S. Supreme Court case striking down a state’s attempt to criminalize private possession of obscene material. The case arose after police, executing a search warrant for alleged bookmaking, found obscene films in a man’s home and he was convicted under Georgia law. Writing for the Court, Marshall framed the issue as one of individual liberty and the limits of state power: whatever the government may regulate in public commerce, it cannot police a person’s private reading or viewing choices inside the home. The decision built on earlier privacy and free-expression precedents and became a touchstone for debates over censorship and personal autonomy.

Marshall’s formulation treats the First Amendment not only as a protection for speakers and publishers but also as a shield for private intellectual autonomy. The home functions as a constitutional boundary: the state may punish distribution or public exhibition of certain materials, but it cannot make mere private possession a crime without collapsing the distinction between regulating public harms and controlling thought. The quote’s force comes from its absolutist phrasing (“means anything”), underscoring that freedom of expression includes the freedom to receive ideas and images—even offensive ones—without government supervision. It is often invoked to argue that censorship regimes become most dangerous when they reach into private life.