One of the major issues regarding the rights of the press and the interests of the government is when a publication should be barred from being published.

One of the first major cases to deal with this issue was the 1931 case of Near v. Minnesota. Jay Near published the newspaper, "The Saturday Press," where he spread his anti-Semitic and anti-black views. One of the articles heavily criticized governor Floyd Olson for being weak on crime. As a result, Governor Olson ordered The Saturday Press to stop publication under Minnesota's Gag Law, which prevented publications from selling, publishing or distributing newspapers that were "malicious, scandalous, or defamatory." Jay Near challenged the law, as it violated his First Amendment rights. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled against him, which led Near to make a last minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after securing financial support from Chicago Tribune publisher Richard McCormick.

The Supreme Court ruled Minnesota's Gag Law unconstitutional because it essentially amounted to press censorship, which detracts from the functions of the press. Chief Justice Hughes outlined that there were only a few exceptions to which the government could issue prior restraint, such as protecting national security or obstructing speech that could incite violence and obscenity.

The Supreme Court would later hear a more famous challenge to prior restraint when dealing with national security in the 1971 case New York Times v. U.S. The issue was whether or not the New York Times could release a set of documents known as the "Pentagon Papers." The documents highlighted U.S. involvement in Vietnam for over two decades. The federal government ordered the New York Times to stop publishing, which led the newspaper to challenge the prior restraint in court. The federal government contended that the release of the papers would harm national security since the Army was still fighting the Vietnam War. The New York Times argued that the documents were historical and didn't deal with current operations of the war. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New York Times because the federal government didn't show that the prior restraint would be a heavy burden on national security and the military operations in Vietnam.

The decision essentially ruled one of Hughes's exceptions from Near v. Minnesota regarding national security as moot. As a result, the Supreme Court has since established high standards the federal government must meet to interefere prior restraint.