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.

The government's defenses of the CDA

The government's main defense of the CDA was that similar decency laws had been upheld in three prior Supreme Court decisions: Ginsberg v. New York (1968); FCC v. Pacifica Foundation (1978); and Renton v. Playtime Theaters, Inc. (1986); and that the CDA should be similarly upheld.

Related Topics:
Ginsberg v. New York - 1968 - FCC v. Pacifica Foundation - 1978 - Renton v. Playtime Theaters, Inc. - 1986

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In Ginsberg v. New York, the Supreme Court had upheld a New York statute that barred selling obscene material to minors under 17; in Reno v. ACLU, the government argued that the CDA was a similar statute applying instead to the Internet. The Court, however, noted that the CDA was much broader than the New York statute, which allowed parents to consent to purchases; applied only to commercial transactions; and as part of the definition of "obscene", said the material must be "utterly without redeeming social importance for minors". (The latter echoed a requirement in the decision overturning a U.S. government ban on the book Ulysses by James Joyce 80 years previous.)

Related Topics:
Ulysses - James Joyce

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In FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, the Supreme Court had upheld the possibility of the FCC delivering administrative sanctions to a radio station for broadcasting George Carlin's monologue entitled "Filthy Words". In Reno v. ACLU, though, the Supreme Court held that this was not case law justifying the CDA, as the FCC's sanctions were not criminal punishments; and TV and radio broadcasts, "as a matter of history, had 'received the most limited First Amendment protection' ... in large part because warnings could not adequately protect the listener from unexpected program content", as opposed to Internet users, who must take "a series of affirmative steps" to access explicit material.

Related Topics:
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation - FCC - George Carlin - Case law

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Finally, in Renton v. Playtime Theaters, Inc., the Supreme Court had upheld a zoning ordinance that kept adult movie theaters out of residential neighborhoods. The government argued that the CDA was an attempt to institute "a sort of 'cyberzoning' on the Internet". In Reno v. ACLU, however, the Court ruled that the "time, place, and manner regulation" that Renton had enacted was not similar to the CDA, which was "a content-based blanket restriction on speech".

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