Supreme Court to Review
Child Online Protection Act
The Supreme Court announced May 21 that it would hear an appeal of a federal appeals court decision blocking enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act, which requires commercial Web sites to obtain proof of age before delivering material considered harmful to minors.
Attorney General John Ashcroft filed a petition for certiorari in February, asking the court to determine whether a three-judge panel from the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acted properly in calling the law’s community standards clause overly broad. Calling the appeals court’s ruling “dramatic and extraordinary in its scope,” Acting Solicitor General Barbara Underwood said in the Justice Department’s appeal that the court had restricted, perhaps fatally, the power of Congress to address the “serious problem” of protecting minors from sexually explicit material online, Reuters reported May 21.
The legislation was Congress’s attempt to address constitutional concerns that led the Supreme Court to strike down the Communications Decency Act in 1997.
Posted May 28, 2001.
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