ACLU v. Reno
| Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union | |
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| Argued March 19, 1997 Decided June 26, 1997 |
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| Full case name | Janet Reno, Attorney General of the United States, et al. v. American Civil Liberties Union, et al. |
| Docket nos. | 96-511 |
| Citations | 521 U.S. 844 (more)
117 S.Ct. 2329, 2334; 138 L.Ed.2d 874
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| Prior history | Prelim. injunction granted (3-judge court, E.D. Penn. 1996); expedited review by S.Ct. per CDA §561 |
| Holding | |
| §223(a)(1)(B), §223(a)(2), §223(d) of the CDA are unconstitutional and unenforceable, except for cases of obscenity or child pornography, because they abridge the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment and are substantially overbroad. The Internet is entitled to the full protection given to media like the print press; the special factors justifying government regulation of broadcast media do not apply. | |
| Court membership | |
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| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Stevens, joined by Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer |
| Concur/dissent | O'Connor, joined by Rehnquist |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amend. I; 47 U.S.C. § 223 | |
Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously ruled that anti-indecency provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) violated First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. Two Justices concurred in part and dissented in part to the decision. This was the first major Supreme Court ruling on the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet.
The Communications Decency Act was an attempt to protect minors from explicit material on the Internet by criminalizing the knowing transmission of "obscene or indecent" messages to any recipient under 18; and also the knowing sending to a person under 18 of anything "that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs." The American Civil Liberties Union argued that certain parts of the act were facially unconstitutional and sought a preliminary injunction preventing the government from enforcing those provisions.
Section 561 of the act required that any facial challenges be heard by a panel of three district judges; that panel granted the injunction. Because the act also permitted appeals to be heard directly by the Supreme Court, the Court affirmed the panel's judgment without the usual intermediate appellate decision.
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); F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation (1978); and Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc. (1986); and that the CDA should be similarly upheld.
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