Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U.S. 564 (2002) (also called Ashcroft v. ACLU or Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union) was a 2002 United States legal court case involving the American Civil Liberties Union and the United States government. The Supreme Court of the United States decided the case, which began in 1999, and found that, contra the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, " COPA's reliance on community standards to identify 'material that is harmful to minors' does not by itself render the statute substantially overbroad for purposes of the First Amendment" (majority opinion). This decision came just four weeks after Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, which dealt with a similar law, the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 (CPPA).
COPA was Congress's second attempt to criminalize the Internet distribution of what it considered pornography, including simulated pornography and artwork.
COPA enforces penalties of a $50,000 fine and six months in prison for the posting for "commercial purposes" of content on the internet that is "harmful to minors". Material that is "harmful to minors" is defined as:
"any communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene or that—
"(A) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest;
"(B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, an actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual act, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast; and
"(C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors." §231(e)(6).
Read more about Ashcroft V. American Civil Liberties Union: History, ACLU V. Ashcroft
Famous quotes containing the words american, civil, liberties and/or union:
“We have yet to deal successfully with American transraciality in real terms, as we have failed to redefine race in light of the modern, twenty-first century progress of human kind.”
—Virginia Hamilton (b. 1936)
“This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world ... and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Freedom is poetry, taking liberties with words, breaking the rules of normal speech, violating common sense. Freedom is violence.”
—Norman O. Brown (b. 1913)
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)