Communications Decency Act thrown out

When the Internet came into wide adoption, the new medium, unlike television and radio, did not have a content-regulation body. The ethos of complete, unfettered freedom and the anonymity afforded by its very architecture enabled all sorts of material, beneficial as well as appalling, to thrive online. That later aspect Congress felt had to be brought under control with the Communications Decency Act, passed on February 1 of the same year it would be struck down.

On this day, June 12, in 1996, a Federal court panel convened in Philadelphia, consisting of Chief Judge Dolores Sloviter and Judges Ronald Buckwalter and Stewart Dalzell found the CDA unconstitutional due to its infringement of free speech.

The matter reached the Supreme court in the case of Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, with the ruling in favor of the defendant, the ACLU. The Supreme Court ruled the CDA did not allow for parents to decide what constitutes indecency for their children, and left the entire definition of “indecent” ill-defined. In place of the struck-down CDA, Congress passed several narrower rulings, including the Child Internet Protection Act, which in a separate case the Supreme Court ruled constitutional.