15
Gorton and received bipartisan support in the Senate, passing in
an 84–16 vote. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton
on February 8, 1996. The CDA prohibited anyone from sending
or making available any obscene or indecent material to children
under age eighteen. Violators could be fined up to $250,000 and
sentenced to two years in prison for each violation.
The CDA immediately came under intense criticism by the
ACLU and other anticensorship advocates, who claimed that re-
stricting speech on the Internet would prevent newspa-
pers from making their content available online, block
access to information about issues such as homosexual-
ity and sexually transmitted diseases, and prevent par-
ents from deciding what material was appropriate for
their children. A week after its passage, US District
Court Judge Ronald Buckwalter blocked enforcement
of the CDA until the government defined the term
in-
decent
. A coalition lead by the ACLU then challenged
the law in court, claiming it was too broad and vague to
be enforceable and that it violated the First Amendment
right to freedom of speech. In an online debate of the issue led by
journalist Linda Ellerbee, those who supported the CDA claimed
that the Internet should be regulated like television and radio be-
cause children had easy access to it. Representative Pat Schroeder
claimed that “free speech is for adults” yet “a five-year-old is better
at getting on the Internet than I am.”
8
Those who were against
the indecency provisions of the CDA argued that software was
available to parents to prevent children from accessing pornogra-
phy. ACLU president Nadine Strossen said, “We can’t allow the
government to stifle it [the Internet] now at the beginning. That
would be an enormous tragedy.”
9
On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that the anti-
indecency provisions of the CDA were unconstitutional. All nine
justices agreed that the CDA violated freedom of speech. In the
court’s opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens quoted from an earlier
ruling when he wrote, “As we have explained, the Government
may not ‘reduce the adult population . . . to . . . only what is fit
for children. . . . Regardless of the strength of the government’s
“A five-year-old is
better at getting
on the Internet
than I am.”
8
— Pat Schroeder, member
of the US House of
Representatives from 1973
to 1997.
