Justices uphold ban on online obscenity
- Mar 15, 2006
The Supreme Court affirmed March 20 a lower court’s ruling that a federal ban on Internet obscenity is constitutional.
The high court upheld a ruling by a special panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York by issuing a summary disposition without hearing oral arguments in the case. In so doing, the justices provided a rare victory at the judiciary’s highest level for foes of online indecency and obscenity.
The case, Nitke v. Gonzales, involved photographer Barbara Nitke, whose sexually explicit photos have included sadomasochistic poses. Her work has been published and displayed in galleries, but she also placed it on the Internet.
Nitke and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom challenged the obscenity provision of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that prohibits the distribution of obscenity over the Internet to children less than 18 years of age. The three-judge panel in the Second Circuit unanimously agreed, however, Nitke and NCSF had failed to show CDA was overbroad.
In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the portion of CDA that barred the online transmission of indecent material but maintained the law’s provision on obscenity.
Since that ruling, the high court also has ruled against the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 measure that targeted commercial websites that make sexually explicit material available to minors. In 2002, the justices invalidated portions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act, a 1996 law that barred images that appear to be of children less than 18 engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
The Supreme Court upheld in 2003 the Children’s Internet Protection Act, which requires public and school libraries that receive government Internet discounts to install filters on their computers to block pornography.
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