Opinion ID: 2975947
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Legitimate Sweep

Text: Because the statute reaches protected speech, it is necessary to determine the statute’s “plainly legitimate sweep.” Broadrick, 413 U.S. at 615. This requires identifying the government’s interests. There are two interests here: (1) being able to know the age of a person depicted and the location of the producer so as to effectively prosecute individuals for child abuse and production of child pornography; and (2) protecting children against abuse. These interests relate to stamping out child pornography. Child pornography is clearly within the legitimate sweep of this statute. It is uncontested that the government may regulate or otherwise ban child pornography. Osborne, 495 U.S. at 109-15; Ferber, 458 U.S. at 773. The government imposing recordkeeping regulations on the producers of child pornography is surely legitimate; it helps accomplish the government’s compelling interest in safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of minors. See Osborne, 495 U.S. at 10910; Sable Commc’ns of Ca., Inc., 492 U.S. at 126. Applying the recordkeeping regulations to all depictions of actual sexually explicit conduct between two adults, however, is not clearly within the statute’s plainly legitimate sweep. One of the reasons the government wants to know a depicted individual’s age is because the government has a difficult time knowing when to prosecute as well as prosecuting successfully because it is hard to identify the image as that of a child. The government claims that such identification is made difficult because images of individuals eighteen and older exist. If these images did not exist, then the only images left would be children, and therefore the proof would be easy. The solution, it is argued, is to require photographs of both adults and children to be kept track of, so that the government will know that a photo it is currently viewing is not of a child but in fact of an eighteenyear-old. This reasoning has been rejected by the Supreme Court. In Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition the government made the exact same argument for upholding a law against possessing or creating images that “appear to be” children; if there are all these images out there that “appear to be” children but are not, then the defense will claim, and the government will have difficulty contradicting, that these images are the ones that merely resemble child pornography. 535 U.S. at 254-55. The Supreme Court rejected this argument, saying that it “turns the First Amendment upside down.” Id. “Protected speech does not become unprotected merely because it resembles the latter. The Constitution requires the reverse.” Id. at 255. Indeed, much of the statute’s sweep would not be legitimated even if this case does not foreclose the government’s ability to regulate so as to prevent defenses and aid prosecution in this manner. This statute covers images of actual sexually explicit conduct regardless of the obvious age of those depicted and regardless of whether or not the photographer actually knows the age of the person being photographed, for instance if the person being photographed is the photographer’s significant other. These images are not within the “legitimate sweep” of the statute because it does not vindicate the government’s interest to cover them. While the government argues that coverage of these images is legitimate because subjective determinations of a person’s age lead to uneven enforcement and greater difficulty in prosecution, No. 06-3822 Connection Distributing Co., et al. v. Keisler Page 11 J.A. at 32, this does not seem to be the case. The government’s own expert testified that he did not need photo identification to conclude that the “vast majority” of individuals depicted in a handful of Connection’s magazines were over the age of twenty-one. J.A. at 479. He further stated that he would not expect anyone else to need photo identification to come to that conclusion. J.A. at 479. It is also noteworthy that the government has before argued that such a subjective determination is not so difficult to ask people to make nor too difficult for the government to enforce. See United States v. Acheson, 195 F.3d 645, 652-53 (11th Cir. 1999), abrogated by Free Speech Coal., 535 U.S. 234; United States v. Hilton, 167 F.3d 61, 73-76 (1st Cir. 1999), abrogated by Free Speech Coal., 535 U.S. 234. We see no reason why an age limitation, such as one that requires the person depicted appear to be a child before records must be kept, could not be employed here. The government contends in this case, however, that “appears to be” a child is not a sufficient sweep because there are photographs solely of body parts, and a secondary producer, who would not necessarily meet the individual in person, would find it too difficult to apply such a standard. Def.’s Br. at 32. This argument is unconvincing. There is no reason the government could not satisfy this interest by regulating those images that depict only body parts without a significant amount of context portrayed to adequately appraise the depicted individual’s age. Indeed, Justice Thomas in his concurrence in Free Speech Coalition suggested that “if technological advances thwart prosecution of ‘unlawful speech,’ the Government may well have a compelling interest in barring or otherwise regulating some narrow category of ‘lawful speech’ in order to enforce effectively laws against pornography made through the abuse of real children.” 535 U.S. at 259. Even he would limit the government to “some narrow category of ‘lawful speech,’ a category for which the government has not here argued or defined.