Reno v. ACLU

Citation: Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), aff'g American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno, 929 F. Supp. 824 (3d Cir. 1996).

The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling, which invalidated the provisions of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”) that criminalized “indecent” and “patently offensive” communications on the Internet. The Court held that despite the intent to protect minors from inappropriate materials, the statute abridged “the freedom of speech” protected by the First Amendment.


 * “We are persuaded that the CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires when a statute regulates the content of speech. In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve.”