Virginia Court Strikes Porn Law Down

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March 30, 2004 (9:15 AM EST)

A Virginia state law designed to prevent juveniles from viewing "sexually explicit" material on the Web has been struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Opponents of the law hailed the decision as a victory for free speech.

Handed down last week, the decision came as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether to rule on the federal Child Online Protection Act of 1998. That law calls for criminal sanctions for Web sites that don't block explicit material from minors. Several other states have struck down similar laws that were designed to block sexually explicit material from reaching children, The Washington Post reported.

The 2-1 decision upheld a lower-court ruling that cited First Amendment freedoms as the reason for striking down the law. In the majority decision, Judge James Spencer stated: "In an attempt to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, [the law would] effectively suppress a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. Individuals who wish to communicate images that might fall within the statute's proscriptions must thus self-censor or risk prosecution."

The law was roughly based on 1985 Virginia regulations that outlawed stores from displaying pornographic materials where minors could see them. That law was later amended to cover the Internet. Then the amended law was challenged.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Paul Niemeyer stated that "Virginia is justifiably concerned with the open and unrestricted display of pornographic materials harmful to juveniles."