Published on: Monday, June 19, 2017

A North Carolina statute makes it a felony for a registered sex offender “to access a commercial social networking Web site” where the offender knows the site permits children to become members or maintain Web pages. A unanimous Supreme Court struck down the law, applying the rarely used intermediate scrutiny test and concluded, “the statute here enacts a prohibition unprecedented in the scope of First Amendment speech it burdens.”  Far from being narrowly drawn, the law broadly prohibited access to websites that “for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge,” including not only Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but also (possibly) Amazon.com, Washingtonpost.com, and Webmd.com (the Court assumed this possibility). Part of the opinion analogizes the Web to a street or park (“a quintessential form for the exercise of First Amendment rights”), and identifies cyberspace as “the most import place[] . . . for the exchanges of views.” This generated a cautionary concurring opinion from Justice Alito (joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas), but may be helpful to you in your practice if you’re challenging conditions of probation or supervised release concerning access to the Web. 

For the opinion, Packingham v. North Carolina, No. 15–1194, click here