WASHINGTON — A long legal drive to shield children from sexually explicit material on the Web ended in failure Wednesday when the Supreme Court let a 10-year- old anti-pornography law die quietly.
In striking down the law on free-speech grounds, judges said parents can protect their children on their own by installing software filters on their computers.
But fewer than half of parents do so, Bush administration lawyers had argued in an effort to revive the law.
Anti-pornography activists said the court’s action, coming a day after President George W. Bush left office, signaled an end to the government’s bid to restrict pornography on the Web.
“The timing puts an exclamation point on it. There’s very little reason for hope on this issue,” said Patrick Trueman, a Virginia lawyer who headed the Justice Department’s anti-pornography unit from 1988 to 1993.
“I don’t think Congress will try again to protect children from pornography,” he said.
The Supreme Court had struck down an even broader law passed in 1996 that restricted “indecency” on the Internet. Following that ruling in 1997, Congress tried again with a narrow measure that targeted commercial purveyors of pornography on the Web. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton late in 1998.
The Child Online Protection Act made it a crime to put sexually explicit material on a website for commercial gain unless the sponsor used some means to keep out minors. It never went into effect, however.
Judges repeatedly cited free- speech grounds and blocked it from being enforced.
The Supreme Court in 2004 said the law violated the First Amendment because it would crimp the rights of millions of adults. In a 5-4 decision, the justices sent the case back to a lower court in Philadelphia to decide if software filters were effective in screening out sexually explicit material.
Last year, the U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia struck down the law as unconstitutional, saying the software filters were “equally effective” as a means of protecting children from online pornography.
In October, however, Bush administration lawyers disputed that claim and appealed to the Supreme Court. Although wide-open free speech remains the rule on the Internet, there is one major exception. The government vigorously prosecutes those who trade online or store on a computer sexually explicit material that portrays children. The Supreme Court has made clear that child pornography is not protected as free speech.
Also on Wednesday, the justices ruled unanimously that victims of sex discrimination in schools or colleges may sue for a violation of their constitutional rights as well as under Title IX of the education code.
