Communications Decency Act

1996 rider (supplement) to the US Telecommunications Bill seeking to prevent the transmission of indecent material to minors via the Internet. It was struck down by a federal court in the same year, and declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in a landmark decision of June 1997, which ruled that the Internet was entitled to the free speech protection of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Within hours of the bill's passage into law on 8 February 1996, suits were filed by 46 plaintiffs including the American Civil Liberties Union, Voter Telecom Watch, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center for Democracy and Technology to block the law's enforcement. On 12 June the Philadelphia federal court struck the law down with a judgement that read in part: ‘Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment (to the US Constitution) protects.’ A second judgement from a New York court agreed. The US government failed to win an appeal to the Supreme Court, and the law was thrown out.