He was forced to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1956, after he had sought a passport to accompany his wife, Marilyn Monroe, to England for the shooting of The Prince and the Showgirl (1957). In 1954, the US State Department had refused to renew his passport (first issued in 1947) on the grounds that he was a "fellow traveler". Subsequent to his 1956 request, HUAC subpoenaed Miller to testify about the unauthorized use of American passports. The justification of the subpoena was that the State Department was withholding approval of his latest request due to derogatory information about Miller's past. In his HUAC testimony, Miller admitted to involvement with many Communist-front organizations and having had sponsored many Communist-backed causes in the 1940s. When Miller was asked whether he had signed an application to join the Communist Party in 1939 or '40, he explained that he believed he had signed an application for a course on Marxism. The date was significant for it was the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939 (thus enabling the launching of World War II by allying the USSR with Germany, partitioning Poland between the two countries, and allowing Adolf Hitler to concentrate his war machine on the West), that led many American Communist Party members, like friendly witness Elia Kazan, to repudiate the Party. To have stuck with the Party or to have joined after the Pact would tar one as a Stalinist. Claiming he could not remember, Miller refused to deny that he had signed statements attacking H.U.A.C. and the Smith Act, and signing a statement against outlawing the Communist party. The Alien Registration Act of 1940, a.k.a. the Smith Act, had been used to destroy the Communist Party. It banned knowingly or willfully advocating, abetting, advising, or teaching the necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing the government of the U.S. or any of its subdivisions by force or violence, or by assassination of its officials. It also outlawed the printing, publishing, editing and distribution of materials advocating violent revolution, and made it a crime to organize, help or make attempts to organize any group advocating the same. The U.S. Supreme Court had upheld the Smith Act in 1951. Upholding the conspiracy convictions of 11 Communist Party leaders, the Court, applying a clear and present danger test, held that free speech could be curbed in order to suppress a serious evil. Miller told H.U.A.C. that he opposed the Smith Act because it might limit "advocacy," which was essential to literature. The right to free expression for artists had to be preserved. Miller's culpability hung upon his helping a group, i.e., the Communist Party, which advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Miller testified that he had attended Communist party writers' meetings four or five times. When he was asked to confirm the identity of the chairman of a 1947 "meeting of Communist party writers" that he had attended, Miller refused to name names. He stated that though he "would not support now a cause dominated by Communists . . . my conscience will not permit me to use the name of another person and bring trouble to him." Section 6 of The Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 made it illegal for any member of a registered Communist or Communist-front organization, or an organization under order to be filed as Communist or Communist-front, to apply for or use a passport if they had knowledge of the actual or impending registration. The provision was later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964 as violating the Fifth Amendment's due process clause. The Court held that the law infringed on the right to travel, and limited "freedom of association." Faulting Section 6 for being too broad in its application, the Court held it to be unconstitutional as it penalized organization members regardless of their knowledge of its illegal aims, whether they were active or not, and whether they intended to further the organization's illegal aims or not. The law was too broad as it affected "Communist-action" and "Communist-front" organizations whether or not a member believed or knew that they were associated with such an organization, or whether they knew that the organization sought to further the aims of world Communism. (However, the next year, the Court upheld State Department area restrictions on passports, finding that its passport policies did not violate the First Amendment as they inhibited action rather than expression. This distinction was again upheld in 1981.) In 1956, however, Section 6 of The Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 was still the law of the land, and it was the law with which H.U.A.C. went after Miller. H.U.A.C. gave Miller an additional ten days to return and answer questions, with the implication that he would be cited for contempt if he did no do so. Miller's lawyers counseled that since the committee's line of questioning had nothing to do with passports, he was not in contempt of Congress for choosing not to answer a question about an unrelated subject. He refused to participate in any further questioning. The State Department issued Miller a six-month temporary passport to accompany Monroe to England, but upon his return, he was indicted by a federal grand jury after the U.S. House of Representatives voted 373 to 9 to cite him for contempt. He was convicted of contempt in federal court, fined $500 and given a thirty-day suspended prison sentence. In 1958, his conviction was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Citing a 1955 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that H.U.A.C had not sufficiently warned Miller of the penalty for refusing to answer a congressional committee's questions.