Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union

Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, (521 U.S. 844) is a 1997 United States Supreme Court case, in which the Court voted 9-0 to strike down two anti-obscenity provisions of the Communications Decency Act (the "CDA"), finding they violated the free speech provisions of the First Amendment. This was the first major Supreme Court ruling regarding the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet.

Majority Opinion

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:

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: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. (...)

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: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 the adult population ... to ... only what is fit for children." (footnotes removed)

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The rest of the CDA, including the "safe harbor" provision protecting ISPs from being liable for the words of others, was not affected by this decision and remains law.

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