Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union
Case Date: 07/09/1997
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Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), is a United States Supreme Court case, in which all nine Justices of the Court voted to strike down anti-indecency provisions of the Communications Decency Act (the CDA), finding they violated the freedom of speech provisions of the First Amendment. Two Justices concurred in part and dissented in part to the decision. This was the first major Supreme Court ruling regarding the regulation of materials distributed via Internet.
The CDA was an attempt to protect minors from explicit material on the Internet by criminalizing the knowing transmission of "obscene or indecent" messages to any recipient under 18; and also the knowing sending to a person under 18 of anything "that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs."
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