The U.S. Supreme Court has once again agreed to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act. This will be the second time since its passage by Congress in 1998 that the act has been reviewed by the High Court.
COPA has been constantly challenged by a broad coalition of First Amendment groups and has never been enforced. Shortly after its passage, the ACLU filed suit against the act in a Philadelphia federal court, which granted an injunction blocking the law from going into effect anywhere in the country.
In 2000, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia declared COPA unconstitutional, finding that its community standards provision was too broad, especially as it relates to materials available over the Internet. The Supreme Court ruled in May 2002 that community standards can be applied to the Internet, but rather than completely overturning the Third Circuit, the justices remanded the case back to the court. This past March, the appeals court again found the act to be too broad, finding that the act was likely to prevent adults from seeing constitutionally protected materials sent over the Internet.
The news that the Supreme Court will hear the appeal came as no surprise to groups opposed to COPA. "It was inevitable," said Emily Whitfield of the ACLU, which will be arguing the case before the court. Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, said the new hearing means that the constitutionality of COPA "will be decided on the issues we had always hoped for; that the act violates the First Amendment rights of adults by limiting their access to non-obscene materials over the Web." The original ruling by both the appeals court and the Supreme Court centered around the issue of community standards.
Congress passed COPA after the Communications Decency Act was declared unconstitutional. COPA would impose criminal and civil penalties on commercial Web sites for posting materials deemed harmful to minors. Whitfield said the ACLU would likely use the June decision by the Supreme Court that upheld the Children's Internet Protection Act in arguing against COPA. In that decision, the justices found that the government could require libraries that receive federal funding to attach filters to their Web connections in order to block material considered harmful to minors. While the ACLU opposed that decision, the ruling does imply that there are means available to prevent minors from seeing objectionable materials without imposing fines on Internet providers, Whitfield said. "It's a less restrictive alternative," she said.
New Patriot Legislation
In other news from Washington, ABFFE cheered the introduction last week of the Security and Freedom Ensured Act. Sponsored by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the bill limits searches under the U.S.A. Patriot Act to the records of people who are foreign agents engaged in acts of espionage or terrorism. The bill follows similar measures introduced by other members of Congress earlier this year (News, Aug. 11) and "demonstrates the growing bipartisan support for amending provisions of the Patriot Act that authorize the FBI to engage in fishing expeditions in the private reading habits of American citizens," Finan said.
