How to Use prior restraint in a Sentence

prior restraint

noun
  • And that’s not just limited to prior restraints.
    — Josef Adalian, Vulture, 28 Apr. 2026
  • Watson denied the claim about prior restraint, saying that no speech is stopped under the law.
    — Josh Snyder, Arkansas Online, 26 July 2023
  • Section 326 isn’t just against prior restraint.
    — Josef Adalian, Vulture, 28 Apr. 2026
  • Courts have -- have exercised prior restraint to stop people from publishing troop movements in the time of war.
    — Fox News, 5 Aug. 2018
  • While not censorship per se, licensing of broadcasters is a form of prior restraint.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Apr. 2026
  • Academic papers about the virus’s origins are now subject to prior restraint by the government.
    — Joel Gehrke, Washington Examiner, 22 Apr. 2020
  • Peterson’s lawyer Michael Hayden fought the move, calling it an unfair prior restraint on his client’s free speech.
    — Nancy Dillon, Rolling Stone, 9 Jan. 2025
  • Still, such a decision in favor of prior restraint is rare and worrisome, media advocates said.
    — Kevin Rector, Los Angeles Times, 5 Aug. 2023
  • The Court ruled that the ban was a violation of both the prohibition on prior restraint and the separation of church and state.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Apr. 2026
  • The rule against prior restraint derives from the English common law principle that liberty of the press is essential to a free state.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Apr. 2026
  • This entry looks at pivotal court rulings that have shaped the understanding of prior restraint in the United States.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Apr. 2026
  • Absent a finding of libel, forcing a retraction would constitute prior restraint.
    — Brian Chasnoff, San Antonio Express-News, 2 May 2018
  • If Twitter were such a forum, almost all content blocking would be an impermissible prior restraint.
    — Vivek Ramaswamy, WSJ, 26 Apr. 2022
  • The Washington Court of Appeals correctly set this prior restraint order aside.
    — Jack Greiner, The Enquirer, 4 June 2021
  • 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
  • That lawsuit amounts to a request for a blatantly unconstitutional prior restraint.
    — Seth Stern, Orange County Register, 13 Feb. 2024
  • 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
  • In the United States, the Supreme Court has generally rejected the concept of prior restraint.
    — Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica, 5 Aug. 2018
  • 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
  • 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
  • The president and provost were named and sued for damages in their personal capacity due to both parties showing their involvement in prior restraint with the protest, McGivern said.
    — Lily Kepner, Austin American-Statesman, 29 Aug. 2024
  • 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
  • Nonetheless, the Court’s opinion in Near acknowledged that prior restraint might be justified in certain exceptional cases.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Apr. 2026
  • In the Court’s view, such prior restraint was acceptable because motion pictures were not organs of public opinion like newspapers but instead a business, pure and simple, and one with a capacity for evil.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Apr. 2026
  • 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
  • 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
  • The company will seek to remove the court order as soon as possible, Babcock said, calling it a presumptively unconstitutional prior restraint.
    — Michael R. Sisak, Fortune, 23 Jan. 2026
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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

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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