The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal law Tuesday that bans “virtual child pornography” using young adults or computer-generated pictures to depict children.
The law, adopted by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, covered any visual depiction “that appears to be a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”
The law contained a provision prohibiting any visual depiction “that conveys the impression” of a minor engaging in such conduct.
The Justice Department said the law sought to combat child pornography in the digital age.
Paul Boyer, Merle Curti UW-Madison history professor said this ruling is the latest chapter in an ongoing struggle with First Amendment legislation. Boyer said because pornography — especially child pornography — is readily available on the Internet, there has been more discussion about protection versus free speech.
“It translates into a social fear with broad cultural implication,” Boyer said. “This means there is a real problem with the First Amendment trying to frame legislative agenda with child pornography and the Internet.”
Boyer said the bill was worded too broadly but that child pornography is a real social issue.
“This is a serious problem,” he said. “It is a real social issue.”
But Boyer said the term ‘child pornography’ has been broadly used and that the bill included language that would have made high school students looking online for pornography in violation of child-pornography laws. Which, he says, is very different from adults looking for sex containing minors.
“Precise definitions of key terms and the specific means of implementation have become highly controversial. Complicating the whole issue is that children today are often more computer-literate than the adults who supposedly are supervising their children’s computer use,” he said.
The high court’s 6-3 ruling was a setback for the U.S. Justice Department, which defended the law, and an important extension of the Constitution’s First Amendment free-speech protections in the computer age.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said the law was too broad and prohibited speech that contained serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
Kennedy also said a number of starring young-adult actors who look like minors explore themes that fall within the wide sweep of the law’s prohibitions.
Anyone possessing these or hundreds of other films that contain a single graphic depiction of sexual activity would be subject to the law’s severe punishment, a maximum of five years in prison.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist disagreed, saying the court should not construe the law as banning films with literary or artistic value, such as “Traffic” or “American Beauty.”
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said she agreed with part of the ruling, which struck down the ban on images of adults who looked like children. But said she would uphold the ban on virtual child pornography created wholly on a computer.
-Reuters contributed to this report
