Supreme Court Strikes Down Another Attempt by Congress to Restrict Free Speech

Case: Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition

April 16, 2002 12:00 am

NEW YORK–The U.S. Supreme Court today struck down Congress’s attempt to expand the definition of child pornography, saying that the law “prohibits speech despite its serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value,” a ruling the American Civil Liberties Union today hailed as a forceful defense of First Amendment principles.

The 6-3 majority opinion, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, “sends a message that Congress may not overstep the boundaries the Court laid out in distinguishing constitutionally protected speech from obscenity and child pornography that harms actual children,” said Ann Beeson, a staff attorney with the ACLU, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case together with its Northern California office.

The Child Pornography Protection Act barred sexually explicit material that depicts what “appear(s) to be a minor”‘ or that is advertised in a way that “conveys the impression” that a minor was involved in its creation. Such depictions, the Court today recognized, could include scenes from Academy Award-winning films like Traffic and American Beauty.

The criminal law could also be applied to “a picture in a psychology manual, as well as a movie depicting the horrors of sexual abuse,” the Court wrote, the kind of material used by the ACLU’s clients, which include the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, the Society for Professional Journalists and the Radio and Television News Directors Association.