Dateline: 04/16/02

The U.S. Supreme Court today declared unconstitutional a federal law making it a crime to display images altered by computer to look like actual children engaged in sexual acts. 

In a 6-3 majority opinion, the court ruled in the case of Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, that the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 (CPPA) violates the First Amendment rights of free-speech.

The law expanded the federal prohibition on child pornography to include not only pornographic images made using actual children, but also "any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture that is, or appears to be of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct." Selling pictures declared pornographic under the law is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, while possession of such material can bring a five year sentence.

The court's majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy found the CPPA to be overly broad and unconstitutional. Finding that CPPA extended the definition of pornography to images not considered obscene under existing federal law, Justice Kennedy writes, "[T]he reasons the Government offers in support of limiting the freedom of speech have no justification in this Court ’s precedents or First Amendment law."

The court also rejected as unconstitutional the Justice Department's contention that CPPA was necessary to prevent pedophiles from using "virtual" or computer-generated pornography to seduce real children. Kennedy writes that this argument "runs afoul of the principle that speech within the rights of adults to hear may not be silenced completely in an attempt to shield." 

The Free Speech Coalition, an adult-entertainment trade association, challenged the CPPA, arguing that provisions of the law were, "overbroad and vague, chilling production of works protected by the First Amendment."   

Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer and Thomas joined Justice Kennedy in the majority decision. Chief Justice Rehnquist, along with Justices Scalia and O'Conner wrote opinions dissenting with all or part of the majority opinion. 

The case was Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (pdf). Viewing this ruling requires the free Adobe Acrobat .pdf file viewer.