Court rejects Internet porn law

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The Supreme Court yesterday barred the Justice Department's enforcement of a law aimed at keeping Internet pornography from children, saying it was likely unconstitutional when remanding it to a federal court for a new trial to resolve the issue.

The high court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld an injunction against enforcing the Child Online Protection Act and sent it back to the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia for a trial to consider changes in technology and the law since its 1998 adoption.

"Content-based prohibitions, enforced by severe criminal penalties, have the constant potential to be a repressive force in the lives and thoughts of a free people," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote, adding that COPA "presumes that parents lack the ability, not the will, to monitor what their children see.

"By enacting programs to promote use of filtering software, Congress could give parents that ability without subjecting protected speech to severe penalties," he said.

Justice Kennedy was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Clarence Thomas, who agreed that holding a new trial in the matter would allow further discussions on what technology, if any, might allow adults to see and buy material legal for them while keeping it out of the hands of children.

Writing for the minority, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said COPA "imposes a burden on protected speech that is no more than modest," it did not act as a censor for all materials and it should be upheld as constitutional.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist joined the dissent, and Justice Antonin Scalia wrote his own dissent.

Justice Breyer said the law "requires providers of the 'harmful to minors' material to restrict minors' access to it by verifying age. They can do so by inserting screens that verify age using a credit card, adult personal identification number or other similar technology.

"In this way, the act requires creation of an Internet screen that minors, but not adults, will find difficult to bypass," he wrote.

The ruling in an appeal by the Justice Department and Attorney General John Ashcroft prevents prosecutors from filing criminal cases under COPA, which restricts and sets civil and criminal penalties for displaying sexually explicit material deemed "harmful to minors" on commercial Web sites.