Court Leaves Future of Online-Protection Law Uncertain

By Mark Walsh

Washington

The U.S. Supreme Court last week partially upheld a federal statute designed to protect children from pornography on the World Wide Web, but its splintered ruling sent the law back to a lower court for further review and left doubt about whether it would ultimately be upheld.

At issue in Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union (Case No. 00-1293) was the Child Online Protection Act, a 1999 statute that makes it a crime for commercial Web sites to make sexually explicit materials available to minors. The law seeks to restrict "material that is harmful to minors" based on "contemporary community standards."

No opinion of the court commanded a majority, but Justice Clarence Thomas said in the main opinion that the law's reliance on community standards did not automatically render it in violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit,...