Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union | |
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Argued November 28, 2001 Decided May 13, 2002 | |
Full case name | John Ashcroft, Attorney General v. American Civil Liberties Union, et al. |
Citations | 535 U.S. 564 ( more ) 122 S. Ct. 1700; 152 L. Ed. 2d 771; 70 U.S.L.W. 4381; 30 Media L. Rep. 1801; 2002 Cal. Daily Op. Service 4057; 2002 Daily Journal DAR 5183; 15 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 256 |
Case history | |
Prior | American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno, 31 F. Supp. 2d 473 (E.D. Pa. 1999); affirmed, 217 F.3d 162 (3d Cir. 2000); cert. granted, 532 U.S. 1037(2001). |
Subsequent | On remand, American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft, 322 F.3d 240 (3d Cir. 2003); affirmed, 542 U.S. 656 (2004). |
Holding | |
The Child Online Protection Act's reliance on community standards to identify what material "is harmful to minors" may make the statute unconstitutional, but community standards need further definition. | |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Thomas, joined by Rehnquist, Scalia, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer |
Dissent | Stevens |
Laws applied | |
Child Online Protection Act; U.S. Const. amend. I |
Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U.S. 564 (2002), followed by 542 U.S. 656 (2004), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court, ruling that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. [1]
In 1996 Congress passed the Communications Decency Act (CDA). The CDA prohibited the use of the Internet to purposely send indecent material to those under 18 years of age. In 1997 the Supreme Court unanimously struck down the anti-indecency provisions of the CDA in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, because in the CDA lacked the precision necessary for any regulation of speech. Congress attempted to address the issue of Internet pornography with a new and more specific statute the following year. [2]
The Child Online Protection Act (COPA), passed in 1998, was Congress's second attempt to criminalize the use of the Internet to distribute obscene material, including pornography, simulated pornography, and pornographic artwork. COPA enforced a $50,000 fine and six months in prison for the posting for "commercial purposes" of content on the internet that is "harmful to minors". [3]
COPA attempted to be more specific than the "harmful to children" provisions of its predecessor statute, and made it illegal for any commercial sources to allow minors access to obscene content, drawing on language from the landmark Miller v. California ruling at the Supreme Court to better define the term "obscenity." Material that is "harmful to minors" was defined as:
any communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene or that—
- (A) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest;
- (B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, an actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual act, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast; and
- (C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors." [4]
Thus, COPA was narrower and more precise that the CDA because it attempted to make use of the Miller Test to find "obscene" Internet material that could be regulated. [5]
Opponents of COPA argued that child pornography was already illegal, and COPA would not be effective because it would waste too much time going after individual sites within the US that could simply set up shop overseas if shut down. It was also argued that COPA would infringe upon the rights of adults to receive legal (but perhaps inappropriate for children) content voluntarily, and that COPA was not the least pervasive or most efficient way to protect children from inappropriate online content. [1]
In 1999, Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted a preliminary injunction blocking COPA enforcement. [6] This ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In 2000, the circuit court upheld the preliminary injunction against COPA because it was impossible to apply "contemporary community standards" to the Internet. [7] This decision was appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted certiorari . [8]
In May 2002, the Supreme Court, in a 8-1 decision, affirmed the injunction against enforcement of COPA enacted by the circuit court, but ultimately ruled that the statute could not be invalidated because of the vague and overbroad definition of "contemporary community standards" in the Miller Test for obscenity. [1] Furthermore, the circuit court should not have determined that defining that term was impossible. Thus, the majority voted to remand the case back to the circuit court to discuss that matter further. [5]
The only dissenting opinion came from Justice John Paul Stevens, who argued that the court should have declared COPA to be unconstitutional without remanding to the circuit court for further discussion. [1]
Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union | |
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Argued March 2, 2004 Decided June 29, 2004 | |
Full case name | John Ashcroft, Attorney General v. American Civil Liberties Union, et al. |
Citations | 542 U.S. 656 ( more ) 124 S. Ct. 2783, 159 L. Ed. 2d 690 |
Holding | |
The Child Online Protection Act was too restrictive in its attempts to regulate harmful material on the Internet, and this violates the First Amendment. | |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Kennedy, joined by Stevens, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg |
Dissent | Breyer, joined by Rehnquist, O’Connor, Scalia |
Laws applied | |
Child Online Protection Act; U.S. Const. amend. I |
In October 2002, the Third Circuit heard the case a second time, after the remand from the Supreme Court. In March 2003, the Third Circuit again upheld the injunction, this time with a more precise discussion of "contemporary community standards". [9] The government appealed that decision and the Supreme Court granted certiorari again, [10] and in June 2004 the Court reaffirmed the original preliminary injunction. [11]
This time, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that, in light of the circuit court's further discussion of "contemporary community standards" in the Miller Test as applied to the Internet, COPA was indeed an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech. The court opined that using contemporary community standards to police the Internet would cause more harm than good, due to differing opinions across America about what was acceptable for children or consenting adults on the Internet. [1]
The court ultimately ruled that COPA was too restrictive in light of the First Amendment. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who delivered the majority opinion, suggested that parents and educators could voluntarily adopt Internet filters and related software to reduce the visibility of harmful or unwanted material. In Kennedy's words, "Filters are less restrictive than COPA. They impose selective restrictions on speech at the receiving end, not universal restrictions at the source. ... [T]he Government failed to introduce specific evidence proving that existing filtering technologies are less effective than the restrictions in COPA.” [11]
The court also found that COPA did not pass the strict scrutiny test for governmental speech regulations, because while preventing children from accessing harmful material on the Internet was a compelling government interest, the statute was not narrowly tailored enough to enable other users, including consenting adults, to access such material voluntarily, and (given the availability of filtering software) the statute was not the least restrictive means of achieving the government's goals. [11]
While allowing the injunction against the enforcement of COPA to stand, the Supreme Court gave the government one more chance to argue its case, due to the now clarified definitions of "contemporary community standards" and other matters. Thus the trial portion of the legal challenge was remanded back to the district court.
Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, arguing that pornography in the media deserved no constitutional protection regardless of the existence of COPA, so that statute should not have been subjected to the strict scrutiny test. [11] Justice Stephen Breyer delivered another dissent, arguing that COPA was indeed the least restrictive means to achieve the government's compelling interest in shielding children from Internet pornography. [11]
The case was remanded to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and went to trial again in 2006, at which time the government was given the opportunity to update its arguments in favor of enforcing COPA. The district court rejected the government's updated arguments, [12] and this decision was appealed again to the Third Circuit. The circuit court ruled against the government again in 2008, once again upholding the injunction against enforcement. [13] The government appealed this decision to the Supreme Court yet again in 2009, but this time the court denied certiorari, [14] effectively striking COPA from the United States Code, with the law never having taken effect.
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck the act's anti-indecency provisions.
Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court modifying its definition of obscenity from that of "utterly without socially redeeming value" to that which lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". It is now referred to as the three-prong standard or the Miller test.
Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, unanimously ruling that anti-indecency provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. This was the first major Supreme Court ruling on the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet.
The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was a law in the United States of America, passed in 1998 with the declared purpose of restricting access by minors to any material defined as harmful to such minors on the Internet. The law, however, never took effect, as three separate rounds of litigation led to a permanent injunction against the law in 2009.
United States v. Extreme Associates, 431 F.3d 150, is a 2005 U.S. law case revolving around issues of obscenity. Extreme Associates, a pornography company owned by Rob Zicari and his wife Lizzy Borden, was prosecuted by the federal government for alleged distribution of obscenity across state lines. After several years of legal proceedings, the matter ended on March 11, 2009, with a plea agreement by Rob Zicari and Lizzy Borden.
New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 (1982), was a landmark decision of the U.S Supreme Court, unanimously ruling that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution did not forbid states from banning the sale of material depicting children engaged in sexual activity, even if the material was not obscene.
Ronald Lawrence Buckwalter is an inactive senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
John Doe v. Alberto R. Gonzales was a case in which the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Library Connection, and several then-pseudonymous librarians, challenged Section 2709 of the Patriot Act; it was consolidated on appeal with a separate case, Doe v. Ashcroft.
United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285 (2008), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that a federal statute prohibiting the "pandering" of child pornography did not violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, even if a person charged under the code did in fact not possess child pornography with which to trade.
United States v. American Library Association, 539 U.S. 194 (2003), was a decision in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that the United States Congress has the authority to require public schools and libraries receiving E-Rate discounts to install web filtering software as a condition of receiving federal funding. In a plurality opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that public school and library usage of Internet filtering software does not violate their patrons' First Amendment free speech rights and that the Children's Internet Protection Act is not unconstitutional.
In the United States, child pornography is illegal under federal law and in all states and is punishable by up to life imprisonment and fines of up to $250,000. U.S. laws regarding child pornography are virtually always enforced and amongst the harshest in the world. The Supreme Court of the United States has found child pornography to be outside the protections of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Federal sentencing guidelines on child pornography differentiate between production, distribution, and purchasing/receiving, and also include variations in severity based on the age of the child involved in the materials, with significant increases in penalties when the offense involves a prepubescent child or a child under the age of 18. U.S. law distinguishes between pornographic images of an actual minor, realistic images that are not of an actual minor, and non-realistic images such as drawings. The latter two categories are legally protected unless found to be obscene, whereas the first does not require a finding of obscenity.
Nitke v. Gonzalez, 413 F.Supp.2d 262 was a United States District Court for the Southern District of New York case regarding obscene materials published online. The plaintiff challenged the constitutionality of the obscenity provision of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). She claimed that it was overbroad when applied in the context of the Internet because certain contents deemed lawful in some communities and unlawful in others will be restricted due to the open access of the Internet. The plaintiff also sought a permanent injunction against the enforcement of the obscenity provision of the CDA. The court concluded that insufficient evidence was presented to show there was substantial variation in community standards, as applied in the "Miller test", and to show how much protected speech would actually be impaired because of these differences. The relief sought was denied, and the court ruled for the defendant. The Supreme Court subsequently affirmed this ruling without comment.
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression v. Strickland, 560 F.3d 443, is a decision of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals involving a constitutional challenge—both facially and as-applied to internet communications—to an Ohio statute prohibiting the dissemination or display to juveniles of certain sexually-explicit materials or performances. The Sixth Circuit panel declined to resolve the constitutional issue but, instead, certified two questions to the Ohio Supreme Court regarding the interpretation of the statute. The Ohio Supreme Court answered both questions affirmatively and placed a narrowing construction on the statute. Since the Ohio Supreme Court's decision, the Sixth Circuit has not reheard the case.
Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731 (2011), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft could not be personally sued for his involvement in the detention of a U.S. citizen in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), is a U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down two overbroad provisions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 because they abridged "the freedom to engage in a substantial amount of lawful speech". The case was brought against the U.S. government by the Free Speech Coalition, a "California trade association for the adult-entertainment industry", along with Bold Type, Inc., a "publisher of a book advocating the nudist lifestyle"; Jim Gingerich, who paints nudes; and Ron Raffaelli, a photographer who specialized in erotic images. By striking down these two provisions, the Court rejected an invitation to increase the amount of speech that would be categorically outside the protection of the First Amendment.
United States v. Kilbride, 584 F.3d 1240 is a case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejecting an appeal from two individuals convicted of violating the Can Spam Act and United States obscenity law. The defendants were appealing convictions on 8 counts from the District Court of Arizona for distributing pornographic spam via email. The second count which the defendants were found guilty of involved the falsification of the "From" field of email headers, which is illegal to do multiple times in commercial settings under 18 USC § 1037(a)(3). The case is particularly notable because of the majority opinion on obscenity, in which Judge Fletcher writes an argument endorsing the use of a national community obscenity standard for the internet.
United States obscenity law deals with the regulation or suppression of what is considered obscenity and therefore not protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In the United States, discussion of obscenity typically relates to defining what pornography is obscene, as well as to issues of freedom of speech and of the press, otherwise protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Issues of obscenity arise at federal and state levels. State laws operate only within the jurisdiction of each state, and there are differences among such laws. Federal statutes ban obscenity and child pornography produced with real children. Federal law also bans broadcasting of "indecent" material during specified hours.
Connection Distributing Co. v. Holder, 557 F.3d 321 is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the record-keeping provisions of the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act did not violate the First Amendment.
Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown, 354 U.S. 436 (1957), was a Supreme Court case that addressed issues of obscenity, free speech, and due process. The case stemmed from the confiscation and destruction of books from a New York City bookstore. The court's determination was that:
A state injunction against distribution of material designated as "obscene" does not violate freedom of speech and press protected by the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton is a lawsuit by trade association of technology and internet-based businesses challenging Texas House Bill 20 that forbade social media companies with more than 50 million users from censoring certain user content along with restricting ability of email providers to filter content except where illegal, obscene or contains malicious code.