Brendan Satran Ashcroft v ACLU (2004 ) PDF

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case brief of Ashcroft V ACLU...

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Brendan Satran 10/24/16 Case Brief 7

Ashcroft v. ACLU (2004) In the case Ashcroft v. ACLU the Rehnquist court decided in a five to four opinion in favor of the ACLU on June 29, 2004. The parties involved were John D. Aschcroft, who was the attorney general, and the American Civil Liberties Union. The reason this case was being argued was that the ACLU believed the congress bill COPA violated first amendment rights by potentially censoring materiel that could not be offensive. The case was ruled unconstitutional in the third circuit and was sent to the supreme court. The supreme court said that it’s basis of “community standards” was not enough to prove it was unconstitutional and was sent back. The second time the third circuit decided that the act was too broad and protected too much materiel and ruled it unconstitutional yet again. The court needed to decide whether or not the Child Online Protection Act caused online content creators to prohibit access to too much materiel protected under the first amendment. The Rehnquist court decided in favor of the ACLU in a five to four opinion. The court decided COPA’s statutes were not effective than other forms of preventing minors from seeing potentially harmful materiel online. They also stated that allowing COPA to be enacted would be more harmful due to the fact that it would possibly restrict online content producers. Source: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/03-218...