Prelim. injunction granted (3-judge court, E.D. Pa. 1996); expedited review by S.Ct. per CDA §561
Holding
The Internet is entitled to the full protection that is given to other forms of media like the printed press or television and the special factors that justify governmental regulations of media broadcasts do not apply in this case. Except for child pornography or obscenity, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 is unenforceable when applied to its anti-decency measures since such provisions are overbroad. Section 502 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is unconstitutional because it violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
The Communications Decency Act (CDA) was an attempt to protect minors from explicit material on the Internet by criminalizing the knowing transmission of "obscene or indecent" messages to any recipient under 18; and also knowingly sending to a person under 18 anything "that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs." The American Civil Liberties Union argued that certain parts of the act were facially unconstitutional and sought a preliminary injunction preventing the government from enforcing those provisions.[3]
Section 561 of the act required that any facial challenges be heard by a panel of three district judges; that panel granted the injunction.[4] Because the act also permitted appeals to be heard directly by the Supreme Court, that court took the case without the usual intermediate appellate decision.
InReno v. ACLU, though, the Supreme Court held that this case law did not justify the CDA. The Court reasoned that the FCC's sanctions were not criminal punishments, and TV and radio broadcasts, "as a matter of history, had 'received the most limited First Amendment protection' ... in large part because warnings could not adequately protect the listener from unexpected program content", as opposed to Internet users, who must take "a series of affirmative steps" to access explicit material.
Finally, in Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., the Supreme Court upheld a zoning ordinance that kept adult movie theaters out of residential neighborhoods.[7] The government argued that the CDA was an attempt to institute "a sort of 'cyberzoning' on the Internet". In Reno v. ACLU, however, the Court ruled that the "time, place, and manner regulation" that Renton had enacted did not correspond with the CDA, which was "a content-based blanket restriction on speech".
In a nuanced decision, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote of the differences between Internet communication and previous types of communication that the Court had ruled on. In conclusion, he wrote:
We are persuaded that the CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires when a statute regulates the content of speech. In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve. ... It is true that we have repeatedly recognized the governmental interest in protecting children from harmful materials. But that interest does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults. As we have explained, the Government may not "reduc[e] the adult population ... to ... only what is fit for children."[1]
The rest of the CDA, including the "safe harbor" provision in Section 230 protecting Internet service providers from being liable for the words of others, was not affected by this decision and remains law.
Justice O'Connor, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, agreed with the decision "as of 1997" but expressed interest in the idea of creating an "adult zone" on the Internet that was made inaccessible to minors through "gateway technology" that had been investigated by a lower district court. If such technology could be introduced, they wrote, zoning portions of the Internet to prohibit adult content could be as constitutional as such zoning is in the physical world.[8]
The two dissented in part, writing they would have invalidated a narrower portion of the two CDA provisions under review.[1]
Fraleigh, Douglas (2003). "Reno v. ACLU". In Parker, Richard A. (ed.). Free Speech on Trial: Communication Perspectives on Landmark Supreme Court Decisions. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. pp. 298–312. ISBN0-8173-1301-X.
Leets, Laura (2001). "Responses to Internet Hate Sites: Is Speech Too Free in Cyberspace?". Communication Law and Policy. 6 (2): 287–317. doi:10.1207/S15326926CLP0602_2. S2CID145214652.
Rappaport, Kim L. (1997). "In the Wake of Reno v. ACLU: The Continued Struggle in Western Constitutional Democracies with Internet Censorship and Freedom of Speech Online". American University International Law Review. 13: 765. ISSN1520-460X.
