United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc.

United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 30, 1999 Decided May 22, 2000
Full case name	United States, et al. v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc.
Citations	529 U.S. 803 (more) 120 S. Ct. 1878; 146 L. Ed. 2d 865; 2000 U.S. LEXIS 3427
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Preliminary injunction denied, Playboy Entm't Grp., Inc. v. United States, 945 F. Supp. 772 (D. Del. 1996); judgment for plaintiff, 30 F. Supp. 2d 702 (D. Del. 1998); probable jurisdiction noted, 527 U.S. 1021 (1999).
Holding
The provision of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) which requires cable television operators to scramble or block channels that are "primarily dedicated to sexually oriented programming" from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. violates the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Section 505 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (47 U.S.C. 561) is unconstitutional.
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, Thomas, Ginsburg
Concurrence	Stevens
Concurrence	Thomas
Dissent	Scalia
Dissent	Breyer, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia

United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, 529 U.S. 803 (2000), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court struck down Section 505 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which required that cable television operators completely scramble or block channels that are "primarily dedicated to sexually-oriented programming" or limit their transmission to the hours of 10 pm to 6 am.^[1]