Following the enactment of the Federal Communication Decency Act (CDA), eleven states have passed laws regulating content on the Internet. These laws were challenged in federal district courts in two states this past summer.

In ACLU v. Miller, Federal District Court Judge Marvin Shoob issued a permanent injunction preventing enforcement of a Georgia law which prohibited anonymous speech and the use of trademarks as links on the World Wide Web. 1997 WL 552487 (N.D.Ga.). The court noted that Georgia had a compelling state interest to prevent fraud and dilution of trademarks, but found that the law was unconstitutionally vague and restricted protected speech. See id at 4. The court stated that "the act prohibits such protected speech as the use of false identification to avoid social ostracism, to prevent discrimination and harassment, and to protect privacy, as well as the use of trade names or logos in non-commercial educational speech, news, and commentary-a prohibition with well-recognized First Amendment problems." See id.

In American Library Association v. Pataki, Judge Loretta A. Preska did not reach the First Amendment problems with New York's version of the CDA. 969 F.Supp. 160 (S.D.N.Y. 1997). The New York Federal District Court ruled that New York's law violated the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution because it placed an undue burden on interstate commerce. The court noted two major problems with state regulation of the Internet. First, the unique nature of the Internet makes it virtually impossible to distinguish geographic boundaries which limit and give notice of the state's jurisdictional power. See id at 168. Second, inconsistent state regulation would inhibit the growth of the Internet. See id at 169. The court also recognized that the burden on interstate commerce outweighed any potential local benefit derived from the law. See id.

Along with the decision handed down by the Supreme Court in Reno v. ACLU, 117 S.Ct. 2329 (June 26, 1997), these cases hold that a state cannot regulate content on the Internet because of First Amendment and federalism limitations. These cases will help pending lawsuits and spur on new lawsuits to invalidate state regulation of content on the Internet.

One such lawsuit is Urofsky, et al. v. Allen, which was filed on May 8, 1997 in federal district court in Eastern Virginia. Six university professors are challenging a Virginia law which bans the use of the state's information infrastructure to access or download materials with "sexually explicit material." The law requires that state employees who wish to download, post, transmit, or store sexually explicit material on their computers must seek prior written permission from agency executives. VA. CODE ANN. § 2.1-804-806 (Michie 1996). The complaint alleges that the law impedes their academic research and imposes an unconstitutional prior restraint on protected speech. Final resolution has not yet been reached in this case.