CDA Overturned - AP Write through 9-0

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

9-0 I called it.


06/26/1997 10:16 EST

Court Nixes Internet Smut Provision


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress violated free-speech rights when it tried to curb smut on the Internet, the Supreme Court ruled today. In its first venture into cyberspace law, the court invalidated a key provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

Congress' effort to protect children from sexually explicit material goes too far because it also would keep such material from adults who have a right to see it, the justices unanimously said.

The law made it a crime to put adult-oriented material online where children can find it. The measure has never taken effect because it was blocked last year by a three-judge court in Philadelphia.

``We agree with the three-judge district court that the statute abridges the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment,'' Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court.

``The (Communications Decency Act) is a content-based regulation of speech,'' he wrote. ``The vagueness of such a regulation raises special First Amendment concerns because of its obvious chilling effect on free speech.''

``As a matter of constitutional tradition ... we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it,'' Stevens wrote.

Sexually explicit words and pictures are protected by the Constitution's First Amendment if they are deemed indecent but not obscene.