Court: Ohio Internet Law Violates First Amendment
State law was too broadly written, judge said in ruling.
By: Bianca Fox
Posted: 09/26/2007
NEW YORK - A federal judge in Ohio
overturned the state law restricting online dissemination of sexually oriented
material that is illegal for children to view, saying the law violates the
First Amendment, the Media
Coalition reported Tuesday.
The lawsuit was brought by organizations
representing booksellers, book publishers, music and video retailers,
newspapers and others. The Media Coalition coordinated the legal action for the
organizations.
"In striking down the law, [the] decision
is consistent with every other court ruling on similar laws," said David
Horowitz, executive director of the Media Coalition. "While we should have
adequate legal safeguards to shield children from objectionable content, those
safeguards cannot unreasonably interfere with the rights of adults to have
access to materials that are legal for them."
According to the Media Coalition, the Ohio law attempted to
prohibit sending sexually oriented material to a recipient whom the sender
knows is a minor or should know is a minor. The coalition said Judge Walter
Herbert Rice of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio ruled
that the law violated the First Amendment because it was too broadly written. He
also said the law could have ensnared adults having sexually frank discussions
with other adults in chat rooms and other similar online venues, the group
reported. The judge noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that "every user
of the Internet has reason to know that some participants in chat rooms are
minors" and there is no way to ensure that minors are not part of the
conversations. The judge also noted that several other courts had reached the
same conclusion regarding similar laws in other states.
"Judge Rice also declared that the law
violated the First Amendment because it failed to target only individuals who
intended to disseminate sexually oriented material to children with the intent
of luring the children into sexual activity, which was the ostensible purpose
of the law," the Media Coalition said.
The Media Coalition has posted the
decision on its website.
Adult industry attorney
Joe Obenberger told AVN Online that the court invalidated a statute restricting
internet content, a statute allegedly drafted only to affect the conduct of
pedophiles. He noted that the court had no trouble "seeing through
this phony argument because the law affected what all people can say on the
Internet" and determining that the statute was unconstitutional as
overbroad. The court has enjoined the enforcement of the statute. He
stated that "it cannot be enforced, that no one can be arrested for a
violation, no one will be put on trial, and no one will go to jail for
violating it."
"It is
interesting to me that the court rejected the Commerce Clause argument that the
states wrongfully encroach on federal powers when they aim to
regulate Internet Content," Obenberger stated.
Obenberger
predicted, "I would not be surprised to see appeals filed in the near future
from the Booksellers Association or from the State, who have each lost
something."
