For the second time, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia has found the Child Online Protection Act, which requires commercial Web sites to obtain proof of age before delivering material considered harmful to minors, to be unconstitutional.
A three-judge panel of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled March 6 that the law made it too difficult for adults to access material that was protected by the First Amendment. The CNet online news service reported March 7 that the court said “COPA will likely deter many adults from accessing restricted content, because many Web users are simply unwilling to provide identification information in order to gain access to content, especially where the information they wish to access is sensitive or controversial.”
In 2000 the same court had rejected the act, finding its “contemporary community standards” clause overly broad. Last May, the U.S. Supreme Court returned the case to the Philadelphia court, saying that the lower court had not sufficiently examined whether the law’s reliance on that standard violated free speech.
The U.S. Justice Department could make a second appeal to the Supreme Court, CNet said.
Passed in 1998, COPA has never been enforced due to injunctions and lower-court decisions won by the ACLU on behalf of 17 plaintiffs. The American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Foundation filed an amicus brief for the plaintiffs in September 1999.
Posted March 10, 2003.