Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition

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Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 30, 2001 Decided April 16, 2002
Full case name	John David Ashcroft, Attorney General, et al., Petitioners v. The Free Speech Coalition, et al.
Docket no.	00-795
Citations	535 U.S. 234 (more) 122 S. Ct. 1389; 152 L. Ed. 2d 403; 2002 U.S. LEXIS 2789; 70 U.S.L.W. 4237; 30 Media L. Rep. 1673; 2002 Cal. Daily Op. Service 3211; 2002 Daily Journal DAR 4033; 15 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 187
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Free Speech Coalition v. Reno, 198 F.3d 1083 (9th Cir. 1999); rehearing denied, 220 F.3d 1113 (9th Cir. 2000); cert. granted, 531 U.S. 1124 (2001).
Holding
The prohibitions of §§ 2256(8)(B) and 2256(8)(D) are unconstitutional because they abridged "the freedom to engage in a substantial amount of lawful speech". United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed.
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	Kennedy, joined by Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Concurrence	Thomas (in judgment)
Concur/dissent	O'Connor, joined by Rehnquist, Scalia (Part II)
Dissent	Rehnquist, joined by Scalia (except for paragraph discussing legislative history)
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I; Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996
Superseded by
Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act 2003 in part, c.f. 18 U.S.C. § 1466A[1]

Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), is a U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down two overbroad provisions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 because they abridged "the freedom to engage in a substantial amount of lawful speech".^[2] The case was brought against the U.S. government by the Free Speech Coalition, a "California trade association for the adult-entertainment industry", along with Bold Type, Inc., a "publisher of a book advocating the nudist lifestyle"; Jim Gingerich, who paints nudes; and Ron Raffaelli, a photographer who specialized in erotic images. By striking down these two provisions, the Court rejected an invitation to increase the amount of speech that would be categorically outside the protection of the First Amendment.