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United States will appeal Child Online Protection Act ruling
Pennsylvania court declared 1998 act unconstitutional in March
June 14, 2007
This latest decision said there is
no practical method to prevent minors from accessing potentially harmful
material without also denying adults of protected speech to which they are
constitutionally entitled.
"After nearly a decade of legal proceedings,
the First Amendment has emerged victorious from the government’s illegal
attempt at online censorship,” said Anthony Romero, the ACLU's executive
director, in a press release. “The courts have ruled, once again, that
speech on the Internet is protected.”
In June 2004, the case
reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where a 5-4 decision said the law was probably
unconstitutional but sent it back to the lower federal court in Pennsylvania.
During discovery, the ACLU contested a government subpoena of Google searches,
delaying the trial's start until October 2006.
The law, the Child Online
Protection Act of 1998, banned any speech on the Internet deemed "harmful to
minors" unless the Web site made a clear effort to prevent minors from accessing
it.
But without any effective technology to determine the age of Web
viewers, the ACLU and other free-speech organizations contended the law would
censor content that was legal for adults. The law also could have prevented
online student media from publishing any content relating to sex or sexuality,
advocates said.
While recognizing Congress's interest in protecting
children from online pornography, the judge in the case, Lowell A. Reed, Jr.,
ruled the law impermissibly vague and restrictive. "I may not turn a blind eye
to the law in order to attempt to satisfy my urge to protect this nation’s
youth by upholding a flawed statute, especially when a more effective and less
restrictive alternative is readily available," he wrote in his
decision.
Restating his earlier decision from when he first heard the
case, Reed added, "Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First
Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away
in the name of their
protection.”
Gonzales v. ACLU,
No. 07-2539 (3d Cir. filed May 25, 2007).
By Isaac
Arnsdorf, SPLC staff writer
© 2007 Student Press Law Center
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