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concurring and dissenting

PADILLA, J.:

I concur with the majority opinion insofar as it removes the ban against the showing of petitioners TV Program Series Nos. 115, 119 and 121. However, I disagree with that part of the majority opinion which upholds the power of respondent Board to subject to prior restraint petitioners religious television programs.

It should by now be undisputably recognized and firmly rooted in this country that there can be no prior restraints on the exercise of free speech, expression or religion, unless such exercise poses a clear and present danger of a substantive evil which the State has the right and even the duty to prevent. The ban against such prior restraints will result, as it has resulted in the past, in occasional abuses of free speech and expression but it is immeasurably preferable to experience such occasional abuses of speech and expression than to arm a governmental administrative agency with the authority to censor speech and expression in accordance with legislative standards which albeit apparently laudable in their nature, can very well be bent or stretched by such agency to convenient latitudes as to frustrate and eviscerate the precious freedoms of speech and expression.

Besides, any person who may feel aggrieved by the exercise of free speech, expression and religion, is afforded, under our system, the remedy of redress in the courts of law, justice and equity.

In short, it is far better for the individual to live in a climate of free speech and free expression, devoid of prior restraints, even at the risk of occasional excesses of such freedoms than to exist in an ambiance of censorship which is always a step closer to autocracy and dictatorship.