Child Porn Law Heads to Supreme Court

High court agrees to review Children's Internet Protection Act bounced by appeals court.

by Roy Mark of internetnews.com [November 13, 2002]

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday it will hear the Justice Department's appeal of a May decision by the federal appeals court in Philadelphia that tossed out a law aimed at restricting Internet access in public libraries. The Philadelphia court ruled that the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was in violation of the First Amendment.

The law, enacted in December 2000 in part to protect minors from access to Internet pornography, required schools and libraries to use filtering software to shield minors from adult material but, because it called for adults to get permission to access certain information, it raised the ire of the civil liberties and library groups. The law also blocked federal funding to libraries that did not install the software.

After CIPA was passed and signed by the president, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Library Association (ALA) claimed the bill was unconstitutional and sued the federal government.

The 3rd District U.S. Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania agreed with the ACLU and the ALA. The three-judge panel said the government could not deny funding to libraries and schools that did not install the software.

It is the third time constitutional challenges have been made against laws aimed at curbing Internet pornography. The Supreme Court reversed a U.S. appeals court ruling which found the 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA) too broad in scope.

In an 8-1 vote, the justices ruled that the appeals court could not bar enforcement of the law on the basis that it relies on community standards to identify harmful material.

The COPA law, which is different from the CIPA law, was intended to make it a crime to place sexually explicit material on the Internet where minors can view it. The law required commercial Web site operators to use credit cards or other adult access systems to prevent minors from viewing the material. COPA imposed criminal and civil penalties of up to $50,000 per day for violations.

Congress drafted COPA in an effort to create a more narrowly defined law than the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, which the Supreme Court struck down in 1997 as unconstitutional, saying the CDA "place(d) an unacceptably heavy burden on protected speech."

Immediately after the passage of COPA, the ACLU teamed up with privacy rights groups—Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)—and filed suit alleging that COPA violated the First and Fifth amendments to the Constitution.

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