National Briefing | Washington: Court Upholds Ruling on Internet Content Law

A federal appeals court upheld a ruling that struck down as unconstitutional a 1998 law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet. The decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, is the latest twist in a decade-long legal battle over the law, the Child Online Protection Act. The court ruled that the law, which has not taken effect, violated the First Amendment because filtering technologies and other tools offer a less restrictive way to protect children from inappropriate content.