Child Online Protection Act Gets Third Strike After a decade of federal litigation and two decisions that were returned to lower courts from the Supreme Court for further review, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals July 22 unanimously declared unconstitutional for the third time the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 on First and Fifth Amendment grounds. “The government has no more right to censor the internet than it does books and magazines,” Chris Hansen, ACLU senior staff attorney, remarked after the ruling was handed down. During the string of legal proceedings, the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Foundation filed several amicus curiae briefs on behalf of the plaintiffs, the latest in November 2007 in American Civil Liberties Union v. Mukasey. (The first was filed in 1999 in support of ACLU v. Reno; as the...
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