Opinion ID: 77301
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Williams's Overbreadth Challenge

Text: 37 Under the overbreadth doctrine, a statute that prohibits a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech is invalid on its face. 48 Williams asserts that the PROTECT Act prohibition of speech that reflects the belief, or that is intended to cause another to believe that materials contain illegal child pornography is no different than the CPPA's prohibition of images that appear to be or convey the impression of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct that was struck down as overbroad in Free Speech Coalition. 38 We begin our analysis with the recognition that subsections (i) and (ii) of the PROTECT Act pandering provision capture perfectly what remains clearly restrictable child pornography under pre-and post- Free Speech Coalition Supreme Court jurisprudence: obscene simulations of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and depictions of actual minors engaged in same. As reviewed above, the government may constitutionally regulate, on interstate commerce grounds, the transportation and distribution of obscene material, even if it is legal to hold privately (i.e. non-real child pornography), 49 and may outlaw real child pornography for all purposes, including private possession. 50 However, the PROTECT Act pandering provision criminalizes not the speech expressed in the underlying materials described in (i) and (ii), but the speech promoting and soliciting such materials. The question before us is whether the restriction on that speech is too broad. 1. The Government may wholly prohibit commercial speech that is false or proposes an illegal transaction. 39 We recognize that, if we consider the pandering provision as purely a restriction of commercial speech, we do not apply strict overbreadth analysis. 51 Instead, we determine whether the government has narrowly tailored any content-based regulation on protected speech, that is neither misleading nor related to unlawful activities, to achieve its desired legitimate objectives. 52 Under this analysis, the government may prohibit completely the advertisement or solicitation of an illegal product or activity as well as false or misleading advertisement because neither is protected speech. 53 If a person possessing or seeking either obscene synthetic child pornography or real child pornography, offers to sell or buy it, this is unlawful commercial activity that the government may constitutionally proscribe. If a person does not have obscene or real child pornography but offers such things for sale, then the offeror is engaged in false or misleading advertising, which the government may likewise punish. 40 If all that the pandering provision stood for was that individuals may not commercially offer or solicit illegal child pornography nor falsely advertise non-obscene material as though it were, the Government need not show that it has narrowly tailored its restriction because neither of these scenarios involve protected speech. We observe, however, that false or misleading commercial advertising is already addressed under other state and federal laws, which are aimed at protecting consumers from fraud. Here, under legislation aimed at protecting children, the only person who is harmed by misleading speech, even if it preys on the basest of motives, is the would-be buyer of illegal child pornography, and that individual is scarcely in a position to complain. Also, although the penalties for false commercial advertising are not specifically raised here, 54 we note that a mere false commercial advertiser is punished on par with an actual child pornographer, without regard to the actual content or even existence of underlying material. Thus, a person offering for sale a copy of Disney's Snow White on false claims that it contains depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct has committed a crime punishable by a fine and at least five- and up to twenty-years' imprisonment, 55 a decidedly disproportionate and draconian penalty. 41 Because the First Amendment allows the absolute prohibition of both truthful advertising of an illegal product and false advertising of any product and because, in the commercial context, we have before us no challenge to the severity of punishment meted out for such behavior, the pandering provision would likely pass our muster as a prohibition of unprotected forms of commercial speech, if that were all it proscribed. However, the law is not limited to commercial exploitation and continues to sweep in non-commercial speech. Accordingly, we must move to the question of whether the restriction on such non-commercial speech is constitutionally overbroad. 2. The PROTECT Act pandering provision continues to sweep in protected non-commercial speech. 42 Because it is not limited to commercial speech but extends also to non-commercial promotion, presentation, distribution, and solicitation, we must subject the content-based restriction of the PROTECT Act pandering provision to strict scrutiny, determining whether it represents the least restrictive means to advance the government's compelling interest or instead sweeps in a substantial amount of protected speech. 56 Under this analysis, we find the language of the provision problematic for three reasons. 43 First, that pandered child pornography need only be purported to fall under the prohibition of § 2252A(a)(3)(B) means that promotional or speech is criminalized even when the touted materials are clean or non-existent. We echo Senator Leahy's concern that the provision thus federally criminalize[s] talking dirty over the Internet or the telephone when the person never possesses any material at all. 57 In a non-commercial context, any promoter—be they a braggart, exaggerator, or outright liar—who claims to have illegal child pornography materials is a criminal punishable by up to twenty years in prison, even if what he or she actually has is a video of Our Gang, a dirty handkerchief, or an empty pocket. 44 Further, while the commercial advertisement of an unlawful product or service is not constitutionally protected, this feature of the Supreme Court's commercial speech doctrine does not apply to non-commercial speech, where the description or advocacy of illegal acts is fully protected unless under the narrow circumstances, not applicable here, of immediate incitement. The First Amendment plainly protects speech advocating or encouraging or approving of otherwise illegal activity, so long as it does not rise to fighting word status. 58 Thus, the non-commercial, non-inciteful promotion of illegal child pornography, even if repugnant, is protected speech under the First Amendment. 45 Finally, we find particularly objectionable the criminalization of speech that reflects the belief that materials constitute obscene synthetic or real child pornography. Because no regard is given to the actual nature or even the existence of the underlying material, liability can be established based purely on promotional speech reflecting the deluded belief that real children are depicted in legal child erotica, or on promotional or solicitous speech reflecting that an individual finds certain depictions of children lascivious. 59 46 Because lascivious is not defined under the PROTECT Act, we apply its ordinary meaning of exciting sexual desires; salacious. 60 What exactly constitutes a forbidden lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area 61 and how that differs from an innocuous photograph of a naked child (e.g. a family photograph of a child taking a bath, or an artistic masterpiece portraying a naked child model) is not concrete. Generally, courts must determine this with respect to the actual depictions themselves. 62 While the pictures needn't always be dirty or even nude depictions to qualify, screening materials through the eyes of a neutral factfinder limits the potential universe of objectionable images. 63 47 In this case, however, the law does not seek to attach liability to the materials, but to the ideas and images communicated to the viewer by those materials. This shifts the focus from a community standard to the perverted but privately held belief that materials are lascivious. Through this lens, virtually all depictions of children, whom to pedophiles are highly eroticized sexual objects, are likely to draw a deviant response. Many pedophiles collect and are sexually stimulated by nonpornographic depictions of children such as commercially produced images of children in clothing catalogs, television, cinema, newspapers, and magazines—otherwise innocent pictures that are not traditionally seen as child pornography and which non-pedophiles consider innocuous. 64 As illustrated in this case, relatively innocent candid snapshots of children, such as those initially exchanged by the defendant Williams and the undercover agent, are also collected and used as a medium of exchange. We cannot, however, outlaw those legal and mainstream materials and we may not outlaw the thoughts conjured up by those legal materials. 48 Freedom of the mind occupies a highly-protected position in our constitutional heritage. Even when an individual's ideas concern immoral thoughts about images of children, the Supreme Court has steadfastly maintained the right to think freely. As the Court stated in Free Speech Coalition, First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought. 65 The Court reiterated that the concern with child pornography is physiological, emotional, and mental health of children, and thus regulation is permissible only when targeted at the evils of the production process itself, and not the effect of the material on its eventual viewers. 66 The PROTECT Act pandering provision misses that target and, instead, wrongly punishes individuals for the non-inciteful expression of their thoughts and beliefs. 67 However repugnant we may find them, we may not constitutionally suppress a defendant's beliefs that simulated depictions of children are real or that innocent depictions of children are salacious. 3. The Supreme Court's decision in Ginzburg does not support pandering as an independent offense 49 The Government's central justification for the pandering provision, found convincing by the district court, relies on the Supreme Court's decision in Ginzburg v. United States, 68 for the proposition that an individual may be found criminally liable for promoting material as appealing to prurient interests even though the material actually being promoted might not fall outside the First Amendment's protection. We believe that reliance is ill-grounded. 50 In Ginzburg, erotic publications that were not hard core pornography, and may not have been obscene per se, became the subjects of conviction because their prurient qualities were exploited, or pandered, by the defendant for commercially sexual purposes. The Court found that evidence of the manner in which the publications were advertised and mailed was relevant in determining the ultimate question of obscenity, and that evidence of such pandering on the basis of salacious appeal may support the determination that the material is obscene even though in other contexts the material would escape such condemnation. 69 In Free Speech Coalition, the Court recognized the limited scope of the pandering rationale expressed in Ginzburg: that in close cases evidence of pandering may be probative with respect to the nature of the material in question and thus satisfy the [obscenity] test. 70 The Court also suggested that Ginzburg has no application where, as in the case of the CPPA, [t]he statute does not require that the context be part of an effort at commercial exploitation. 71 51 We disagree with the district court that Ginzburg supports a prohibition of pandering as a stand-alone crime without regard to the legality, or even to the existence, of the pandered material. First, we note that, notwithstanding its brief mention by the Court in Free Speech Coalition, there is some question as to the continued vitality of the Ginzburg pandering rationale. Shortly after Ginzburg was decided, the Supreme Court held in Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc. 72 that truthful, non-misleading commercial speech is protected by the First Amendment, although to a lesser degree than protected non-commercial speech. The sort of pandering that caused the publications in Ginzburg to be found obscene, in other words, has since gained some First Amendment protection. In one of two post- Ginzburg cases in the 1970s, a dissent joined by four justices states that  Ginzburg cannot survive Virginia Pharmacy.  73 While the Supreme Court has not substantially addressed the Ginzburg pandering rationale since the 1970s, Justice Stevens more recently reiterated that, since Ginzburg was decided before the Court extended First Amendment protection to commercial speech, a proposal that otherwise legal material be deemed obscene on the basis of its titillating marketing, is anachronistic. 74 Consequently, although Ginzburg has not been overturned, its precedential value is questionable. 52 Even if the Ginzburg pandering rationale remains viable, the PROTECT Act pandering provision, as discussed above, is not limited to the commercial context. In considering the CPPA pandering provision at issue in Free Speech Coalition, the Court clearly suggested that, even if the Ginzburg pandering rationale remains viable, it would only apply in a the commercial context. 75 The PROTECT Act pandering provision, like the CPPA pandering provision found unconstitutional in Free Speech Coalition, does not require that the context be part of an effort at 'commercial exploitation.' 76 53 Finally, to the extent that the Ginzburg pandering rationale remains valid, it lends little constitutional support to the pandering provision at issue here. With respect to the obscene virtual or simulated material described under subsection (i), if the pandering rationale remains valid, then it might be the basis for a court to uphold a conviction under the PROTECT Act for distributing material of questionable social value that would not be deemed obscene but for the defendant's promotion of it suggesting that it was. But if the rationale holds, then this would be the case under existing obscenity law and the pandering provision adds nothing in that respect. The rationale does not justify a prosecution under the PROTECT Act that goes farther than existing obscenity law by attempting to convict a defendant for distributing material that is clearly not obscene, merely because the defendant pandered it as obscenity. 77 54 With respect to real child pornography as described under subsection (ii), the Ginzburg pandering rationale is of no relevance. If the pandering rationale remains relevant to determinations of obscenity, it does so because such determinations are made by a subjective test that weighs a publication's degree of social value under the Miller test. Ginzburg held only that pandering may be probative of those factors. Determinations of real child pornography as described in subsection (ii), on the other hand, are made by a purely objective test: whether or not the material visually depicts an actual minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. The manner in which the material is promoted has no bearing on the answer to this question. As one commentator observed, [n]o amount of pandering, even misleading pander, can convert a virtual child into a real child. 78 55 In sum, the Government urges us to read the PROTECT Act as writing the Ginzburg pandering rationale into the law. We note that at least one state law concerning obscene visual depictions of children has succinctly done just that. 79 But the Government asks us to stretch that rationale much farther, to support pandering as an independent crime rather than only as evidence of the crime of obscenity or child pornography. We believe such an interpretation of Ginzburg butts directly against the holding of Free Speech Coalition and, accordingly, find that Ginzburg does not rescue the PROTECT Act pandering provision from substantial overbreadth. 80 4. The PROTECT Act pandering provision is not justified by legislative findings. 56 The pandering provision of the PROTECT Act, for reasons we have discussed, is inconsistent with Miller and Ferber, as reaffirmed in Free Speech Coalition, and is not sustainable under Ginzburg. The Government, however, seeks to justify its prohibitions in other ways. 57 First, noting the state's compelling interest in protecting children from those who sexually exploit them, Congress relies on Ferber and Osborne for the proposition that this interest extends to stamping out the market for child pornography. 81 However, Congress has not adequately explained why the mere pandering of otherwise legal material should be prohibited in the pursuit of this interest. 58 In the PROTECT Act's Conference Report, Congress mentions that even fraudulent offers to buy or sell unprotected child pornography help to sustain the illegal market for this material. 82 This appears to be a resurrection of the market-deterrence theory advanced by the Government, and rejected by the Court, in Free Speech Coalition. As the Court recognized, the prohibitions of real child pornography in Ferber and Osborne were upheld on a production-based rationale. The Court in Ferber allowed market deterrence restrictions because they destroyed the profit motive to exploit real children. Congress has again failed to articulate specifically how the pandering and solicitation of legal images, even if they are promoted or believed to be otherwise, fuels the market for illegal images of real children engaging in sexually explicit conduct. 59 Next, the Government points to the legislative findings of the PROTECT Act that articulate the difficulties in successful prosecution of child pornography possession cases where advancements in computer technology allow images to be so altered as to cast reasonable doubt on whether they involve real children. 83 Congress characterizes the pandering provision as an important tool for prosecutors to punish true child pornographers who for some technical reason are beyond the reach of the normal child porn distribution or production statutes. 84 The Government argues that, grounded on these findings, the pandering provision allows prosecutions to go forward against persons who not only have the intent to participate in the child pornography market, but who actively solicit others to participate in that market, regardless of whether the government can prove whether the underlying material is real child pornography or not. Without such prosecutorial tools, it argues, the child pornography market will flourish, harming real children. 85 60 This argument not only attempts, once again, to revive the rejected market proliferation rationale but also disregards the firmly established principle that [t]he Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech. 86 And when the technical reason is that the material being described or exchanged does not fall within one of the two proscribable categories—but instead is legal child erotica, innocent pictures of children arousing only in the minds of certain viewers, or non-existent— the Government cannot circumvent the criminal procedure process. In a non-commercial setting, in which most child pornography is discussed and exchanged, pandering at most either raises actionable suspicion that illegal materials are possessed 87 or is evidentiary of the social merit of questionable materials. The Government must do its job to determine whether illegal material is behind the pander. 61 The Government urges that we consider this simply an inchoate crime, arguing that only those with specific intent to traffic in illegal child pornography will be ensnared 88 and noting, for example, that offers to buy or sell illegal drugs can be punished even if no drugs actually exist. However, the inchoate offenses—attempt, solicitation, conspiracy—are covered elsewhere in the code. 89 Further, the intent element only applies to one portion of the provision —promoting material in a manner that is intended to cause another to believe it is illicit—and, to be a violator, one need not intend to distribute illegal materials, but only intend that another believe the materials one has are lascivious. Also, a defendant may be liable for promoting, distributing, or soliciting perfectly legal materials that only he or she personally believes are lascivious. As Professor Schauer notes, when the non-existence of illegality is a function not of the non-existence of an illegal product but rather the non-illegality of an existing product, the First Amendment returns to the picture. 90 Finally, with any inchoate offense the government must show some substantial movement toward completing the crime, must prove, in other words, something beyond mere talk. Under the PROTECT Act pandering provision, mere talk is all that is required for liability and that does not square with Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence. 62 In sum, we recognize that Congress has a compelling interest in protecting children and, to that end, may regulate in interstate commerce settings the distribution or solicitation of the materials described in subsections (i) (obscene child pornography) and (ii) (real child pornography) of the PROTECT Act pandering provision. However, the pandering provision goes much farther than that. The provision abridges the freedom to engage in a substantial amount of lawful speech in relation to its legitimate sweep, and the reasons the Government offers in support of such limitations have no justification in the Supreme Court's First Amendment precedents. Accordingly, we find it unconstitutionally overbroad.