Critics Say High Court Ruling Protects Pornographers, Harms Children
by Jenni Parker
June 29, 2004
(AgapePress) - The United States Supreme Court ruled Tuesday (June 29) that Congress' latest attempt to protect innocent children from the devastating effects of Internet pornography, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), is unconstitutional. In a 5-4 decision, the Court sided with the American Civil Liberties Union, ruling that filtering software was a less restrictive alternative to the requirements of COPA.Attorneys with the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy are outraged by the decision. Senior litigation counsel Mike DePrimo described the justices' apparent "utter lack of concern for the irreparable harm pornography does to our most innocent citizens" as "astounding."
The court's opinion cited concerns about COPA's "potential for extraordinary harm and serious chill upon free speech." However, DePrimo contends the only real harm that pornographers would suffer if the law went into effect would be a loss of money. He says for the high court to find otherwise is "reprehensible."
The Family Research Counsel's senior legal advisor, Pat Trueman, who helped author the FRC's amicus brief in the case, also issued a statement in response to the ruling, calling it "yet another victory at the High Court for pornographers at the expense of America's children." He says companies that peddle porn should not have the luxury of exposing their filth to every child who may stumble onto their website.
COPA would have required Internet users attempting to view adult sites to register using age-related access codes. "With spam e-mails and pop-up ads littering the Internet," Trueman notes, "it is easy to see how a child could unwittingly end up on a pornographic website. It is not too much to ask that web users who want to access commercial pornographic content prove they are adults."
James Lambert, author of Porn in America (Huntington House) is also disappointed with the high court. He says the justices -- Kennedy, who authored the opinion, and Stevens, Thomas, Souter, and Ginsberg, who all voted with the majority -- have bought into the ACLU's lie. But Lambert says it is America's children, not the First Amendment, that were at risk in the case, and now it is the children who will experience the greatest harm because of this ruling.
"What most people do not understand," Lambert says, "is that hard-core Internet smut peddlers put up free banners and thumbnail pictures containing all types of hard-core porn images, free for anyone to see, including small children. COPA would have blocked these images from under-aged minors."
ACLU -- Left-Handed Tactics?
The author says if anything, "this ruling sends the wrong message to millionaire pornographers." He says it seems to suggest that the courts are more concerned with protecting those individuals' free speech and profits than with ensuring the safety and innocence of young children. Lambert feels Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as a former high ranking member of the ACLU, should have recused herself from the decision -- a decision he says is bad for America and especially bad for children.
According to attorney Steve Crampton, chief counsel for the AFA Law Center, the case has once again shown that the American Civil Liberties Union will do anything to win. He notes that in the last major Internet porn case (over CIPA, the Children's Internet Protection Act), the ACLU attacked filtering software as clumsy and overprotective. But this time, the liberal group argued that filtering software is far better able to protect children than the restrictions required by COPA.
"By siding with the ACLU," the lawyer says, "the Supreme Court has again affirmed that those bent on destroying the family are entitled to more First Amendment protection than those seeking to protect it, such as pro-lifers and street preachers."
Crampton notes, "If there is any silver lining at all in the decision, it is that it is temporary, and the case will go back to the district court for a full trial on the merits."
The COPA case was appealed from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and the court entered a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the Act, which was affirmed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The case will now return to the district court for trial.
