Ban upheld on offering child porn

The Supreme Court allows a 2003 law dealing with 'virtual' child porn that some thought was too broad.

By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the May 20, 2008 edition

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Washington - The US Supreme Court has upheld an effort by Congress to make it illegal to offer or promote child pornography – even when the photographs being offered or promoted don't really exist or involve real children.

In a 7-to-2 decision announced on Monday, the high court said the law was a constitutional effort by Congress to protect innocent children from a thriving form of abuse.

The majority justices upheld the law even though it restricted certain kinds of speech that critics said must be protected by the First Amendment.

Instead, the high court said Congress had struck the correct balance in passing the anti-child-pornography law.

"We hold that offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography are categorically excluded from the First Amendment," writes Justice Antonin Scalia for the majority.

The PROTECT Act of 2003 is an attempt to shut down a flourishing trade in child pornography over the Internet. It seeks to do it not only by barring the exchange of pictures depicting children in sexually explicit poses, but also by outlawing any attempt to convince another person that offered pictures are of real child pornography involving real children.

In effect, the law makes it illegal to try to dupe other would-be consumers of child pornography into thinking that they are about to receive actual child pornography. The activity is illegal even if the photographs do not involve actual child pornography. In addition, such pandering is illegal even if the photographs don't exist.

The majority justices said the statute was not too broad or too vague to pass constitutional muster.

The law "punishes speech seeking to conclude illegal transactions," Justice Scalia said in a statement from the bench. "Such speech does not get First Amendment protection."

He adds, in the opinion: "Offers to give or receive what it is unlawful to possess have no social value and thus, like obscenity, enjoy no First Amendment protection."

His opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, and Samuel Alito.

Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented. Justice Souter writes that prior Supreme Court rulings established that only pornographic photographs of actual children may be prohibited and that virtual child pornography retains First Amendment protections.

Justices Souter and Ginsburg said the 2003 PROTECT Act violates free-speech protections by allowing a new pandering prohibition aimed at suppressing otherwise protected speech. In other words, if virtual child pornography is protected by the First Amendment, how could an attempt to pander virtual child pornography be illegal?

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