Those of you with long memories will recall the saga of the Child Online Protection Act, once known as “CDA II.” “CDA I,” an effort to restrict “indecent” communications online, was struck down by the courts as an unconstitutionally broad restriction of free speech on the Net. The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was Congress’s attempt to outlaw or restrict porn online by drawing a narrower standard that might pass legal muster. The ACLU sued the government, immediately after the bill was signed into law in 1998, on behalf of Salon and a group of other plaintiffs representing a broad swath of online publishing and businesses who felt the new law was also highly problematic. (You can read Salon’s original editorial on the matter here.) The ACLU and our plaintiffs’ group won in district court, and won again at the appeals court level. The Supreme Court offered a complex mixed ruling last year that essentially sent the law back to the appeals court for further review.
Well, the appeals court issued a ruling late yesterday, in favor of ACLU and the plaintiffs. According to the ruling, “COPA’s reliance on ‘community standards’ to identify material ‘harmful to minors’ could not meet the exacting standards of the First Amendment.’ ”
I don’t doubt that the Ashcroft Justice Department will wish to challenge this ruling once more — it has 90 days to decide. And so the whole thing is likely to end up back before the Supreme Court once more.
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