Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union

Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 19, 1997 Decided June 26, 1997
Full case name	Janet Reno, Attorney General of the United States, et al. v. American Civil Liberties Union, et al.
Docket no.	96-511
Citations	521 U.S. 844 (more) 117 S. Ct. 2329; 138 L. Ed. 2d 874; 1997 U.S. LEXIS 4037
Case history
Prior	Prelim. injunction granted (3-judge court, E.D. Pa. 1996); expedited review by S.Ct. per CDA §561
Holding
The Internet is entitled to the full protection that is given to other forms of media like the printed press or television and the special factors that justify governmental regulations of media broadcasts do not apply in this case. Except for child pornography or obscenity, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 is unenforceable when applied to its anti-decency measures since such provisions are overbroad. Section 502 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is unconstitutional because it violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	Stevens, joined by Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer
Concur/dissent	O'Connor, joined by Rehnquist
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I; 47 U.S.C. § 223

Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, unanimously ruling that anti-indecency provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech.^[1] This was the first major Supreme Court ruling on the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet.^[2]