United States v Stevens
559 U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 1577 (2010)
Facts: Stevens was convicted under 18 U.S.C. Section 48 for selling videos depicting dog fighting. The relevant statute criminalized creation, sale and possession of depictions of animal cruelty. It only criminalized the portrayals and not the underlying conduct. The statute had an exception for depictions with scientific, journalistic, political and artistic value and was enacted for the purpose of criminalizing people with a sexual fetish for "crushing."
Challenge: Stevens argues statute is overbroad and infringing on his First Amendment rights while the government argues it should be an unprotected category of speech.
Procedure: The District Court upheld the constitutionality of the statute and convicted Stevens. The Third Circuit vacated the decision and declared it unconstitutional as a content based restriction on speech. Supreme Court granted cert.
Issue: Whether prohibition in the statute is consistent with freedom of speech guaranteed but the First Amendment.
Held: Unconstitutional, animal cruelty is not considered a category of unprotected speech and the Supreme Court refuses to expand categories of unprotected speech.
Reasoning:Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the court. The statute was over broad and because animal cruelty is not a categorically unprotected class, the regulation based on content of speech is presumptively invalid and the government must bear the burden to rebut the presumption. There is no tradition in prohibiting the depicting of such cruelty. The government argues that a claim of categorical exclusion should be considered under a simple balancing test of value of speech and its societal costs. The court says this test is startling and dangerous and refuse to expand the categories of unprotected speech. Holding there is not enough of a compelling interest and there are more narrowly tailored ways of achieving this interest especially since there are already federal statutes criminalizing animal cruelty. It makes sure to let the government know that their decision in Ferber cannot be taken as establishing a free-whiling authority to declare new categories of speech outside the First Amendment. The Court holds that while the purpose of criminalizing crush videos and videos of animal fighting is legitimate, there are still many categories of protected speech that would fall within this statute and thus it is not narrowly tailored to a compelling interest.
Dissent: (Alito) argues that like Ferber (in which the court held that child pornography was unprotected speech because of the acts it entails and how the safety of children to not be used for such act is a compelling interest) this statute should be upheld.
559 U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 1577 (2010)
Facts: Stevens was convicted under 18 U.S.C. Section 48 for selling videos depicting dog fighting. The relevant statute criminalized creation, sale and possession of depictions of animal cruelty. It only criminalized the portrayals and not the underlying conduct. The statute had an exception for depictions with scientific, journalistic, political and artistic value and was enacted for the purpose of criminalizing people with a sexual fetish for "crushing."
Challenge: Stevens argues statute is overbroad and infringing on his First Amendment rights while the government argues it should be an unprotected category of speech.
Procedure: The District Court upheld the constitutionality of the statute and convicted Stevens. The Third Circuit vacated the decision and declared it unconstitutional as a content based restriction on speech. Supreme Court granted cert.
Issue: Whether prohibition in the statute is consistent with freedom of speech guaranteed but the First Amendment.
Held: Unconstitutional, animal cruelty is not considered a category of unprotected speech and the Supreme Court refuses to expand categories of unprotected speech.
Reasoning:Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the court. The statute was over broad and because animal cruelty is not a categorically unprotected class, the regulation based on content of speech is presumptively invalid and the government must bear the burden to rebut the presumption. There is no tradition in prohibiting the depicting of such cruelty. The government argues that a claim of categorical exclusion should be considered under a simple balancing test of value of speech and its societal costs. The court says this test is startling and dangerous and refuse to expand the categories of unprotected speech. Holding there is not enough of a compelling interest and there are more narrowly tailored ways of achieving this interest especially since there are already federal statutes criminalizing animal cruelty. It makes sure to let the government know that their decision in Ferber cannot be taken as establishing a free-whiling authority to declare new categories of speech outside the First Amendment. The Court holds that while the purpose of criminalizing crush videos and videos of animal fighting is legitimate, there are still many categories of protected speech that would fall within this statute and thus it is not narrowly tailored to a compelling interest.
Dissent: (Alito) argues that like Ferber (in which the court held that child pornography was unprotected speech because of the acts it entails and how the safety of children to not be used for such act is a compelling interest) this statute should be upheld.