How to Use prior restraint in a Sentence

prior restraint

noun
Definition of prior restraintnext
  • Courts have -- have exercised prior restraint to stop people from publishing troop movements in the time of war.
    — Fox News, 5 Aug. 2018
  • In the United States, the Supreme Court has generally rejected the concept of prior restraint.
    — Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica, 5 Aug. 2018
  • The judge said that the case was essentially about prior restraint and that the city would need to address it and wider 1st Amendment issues before any decisions would be made.
    — Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times, 18 May 2023
  • First, the requirement that certain fact checkers register with the state and post a $1 million bond is a prior restraint on speech that violates the First Amendment.
    — Star Tribune, 20 May 2021
  • Academic papers about the virus’s origins are now subject to prior restraint by the government.
    — Joel Gehrke, Washington Examiner, 22 Apr. 2020
  • The Washington Court of Appeals correctly set this prior restraint order aside.
    — Jack Greiner, The Enquirer, 4 June 2021
  • Wilson has maintained that this is a First Amendment case, claiming that the government’s attempts to block the publication of the information on the web amounts to prior restraint barred by Supreme Court precedent.
    — Agueda Pacheco-Flores, The Seattle Times, 31 July 2018
  • The Supreme Court’s ruling 17 days later allowing publication to resume has been seen as a statement that prior restraint on freedom of the press is rarely justified.
    — New York Times, 7 Jan. 2021
  • In the years since, the Internet has made it all but impossible for democratic governments to directly censor the press; prior restraint is now hard to pull off, even for an autocrat.
    — Bruce D. Brown, Time, 5 Feb. 2018
  • The Supreme Court made that clear in the Pentagon Papers case, a landmark ruling against prior restraint blocking the publication of newsworthy journalism.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 20 Nov. 2021
  • If Twitter were such a forum, almost all content blocking would be an impermissible prior restraint.
    — Vivek Ramaswamy, WSJ, 26 Apr. 2022
  • Faculty members, student groups and a campus minister sued the regents in federal court, alleging prior restraint under the First Amendment.
    — Anne Ryman, azcentral, 7 June 2018
  • Absent a finding of libel, forcing a retraction would constitute prior restraint.
    — Brian Chasnoff, San Antonio Express-News, 2 May 2018
  • Any formal legal cease and desist order issued against the news media would be a prior restraint that is almost certainly unconstitutional.
    — Molly Beck, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 4 Feb. 2020
  • If the prior restraint indeed inhibits speech on matters of public concern, the court then considers whether the First Amendment interests of the plaintiff and the public outweigh the government's interest in functioning efficiently.
    — Jack Greiner, The Enquirer, 17 Feb. 2021
  • Even for the narrow categories of speech that aren’t protected, nearly all content blocking on social media goes against the first principle of free-speech jurisprudence—the ban on prior restraint, or censorship without judicial review.
    — Vivek Ramaswamy, WSJ, 26 Apr. 2022
  • Dan Laidman, who represented the Times and AP, argued that higher courts have struck down prior restraint orders limiting coverage of criminal proceedings.
    — Christopher Weber, Fox News, 27 Sep. 2018
  • The University of Florida’s decision to muzzle its faculty appears to be an unprecedented case of prior restraint.
    — Michael T. Nietzel, Forbes, 31 Oct. 2021
  • In assessing the constitutionality of a prior restraint on government employee speech, courts use a two-step analysis.
    — Jack Greiner, The Enquirer, 17 Feb. 2021
  • But the idea that the university should impose a prior restraint by canceling the conference because of the views of its organizers and attendees is wholly inconsistent with the most basic principles of free speech and association.
    — Samantha Harris, National Review, 23 Jan. 2020
  • Wood’s order amounts to prior restraint, the legal term generally used for when courts block a newspaper or other journalistic organization from publishing something.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 20 Nov. 2021
  • Yet to amici’s knowledge, outside the context of intellectual property disputes — and in decades past, the regulation of obscenity — no appellate court has ever affirmed a prior restraint of a motion picture.
    — Eriq Gardner, Billboard, 12 Oct. 2017
  • 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, USA TODAY, 15 May 2023
  • Although Facebook is a private entity not subject to constitutional restraints, the courts generally have held that lying may be legally permissible in many circumstances, and prior restraint of expression is anathema to a free society.
    — Star Tribune, 7 May 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'prior restraint.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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