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Vermont’s Harmful-to-Minors Law Ruled Unconstitutional—Sort ofA federal appeals court ruled August 27 that a Vermont law restricting the online transmission to youngsters of material deemed harmful to minors in Vermont violates both the First Amendment and the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress power to regulate commerce among the states. The law “burdens protected communications” and “projects Vermont’s regulatory regime onto the rest of the nation,” wrote Chief Judge John M. Walker Jr. for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.However, the court narrowed the April 2002 lower-court injunction against the law’s enforcement “only as applied to the Internet speech upon which plaintiffs [the American Civil Liberties Union and the Sexual Health Network] based their suit.” The plaintiffs had cited the law’s impact on their publication of information related to safe sex and birth control. In narrowing the injunction’s scope, the court agreed with the attorney general that the law would be constitutional if all it did was to forbid the transmission of sexually explicit e-mails to Vermont citizens known to be younger than 16. The law exempts from liability public library workers, along with those employed by museums and schools. Passed in 2000, the law amended the state’s definition of what material is harmful to minors by proscribing the transmission of any prurient “description or representation, in whatever form” of nudity or sexual conduct, including touching someone’s clothed buttocks or displays of affection between people of the same gender. In filing suit, ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation and seven other plaintiffs argued that the law’s vagueness unduly restricted adults from disseminating or accessing legal speech. “We think it likely that the Internet will soon be seen as falling within the class of subjects that are protected from state regulation because they imperatively demand a single uniform rule,” Chief Judge Walker also noted in the decision. Posted September 1, 2003. |
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