Opinion ID: 4561955
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: As-Applied Claims

Text: We next turn to the ten other plaintiffs’ as-applied claims. The remaining plaintiffs contend that the Statutes’ age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements, and the regulations that implement those requirements, violate the First Amendment. They separately assert that the criminal penalties for noncompliance with the Statutes’ requirements cannot withstand scrutiny under the First Amendment. We address these as-applied claims in turn. 1. Age Verification, Recordkeeping, and Labeling Requirements The District Court upheld the age verification requirement as applied to primary producers, but invalidated that requirement as applied to secondary producers. In addition, the District Court struck down the recordkeeping and labeling requirements as applied to both primary and secondary producers. We will affirm in part and reverse in part. We conclude that for the plaintiffs with standing to bring as-applied claims, the age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements all violate the First Amendment. The plaintiffs argue that the age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements violate the First Amendment as applied to them. They propose that as applied, Congress could have used a less restrictive alternative by limiting the age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements to circumstances where a performer in a sexually 22 explicit depiction “might reasonably appear” to be a child. Pls. Br. 24. The plaintiffs explain that when a performer in a sexually explicit depiction is a “mature adult[],” there is no chance that the performer might be a child. Pls. Br. 26. So, the plaintiffs’ argument goes, because the age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements apply regardless of a performer’s age, the requirements unnecessarily restrict the plaintiffs’ speech when there is no risk a child was harmed. We agree. The age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements protect children when a sexually explicit depiction shows a young-looking performer who could be a child. In that circumstance, the requirements serve the Government’s compelling interest in protecting children by ensuring that producers of sexually explicit depictions “confirm” performers are not children, preventing “children from passing themselves off as adults” to producers, and eliminating “subjective disputes” over whether a producer should have verified a performer’s age. FSC I, 677 F.3d at 535. But the age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements need not prevent all mistakes about age to protect children from sexual exploitation. The requirements “do not advance the Government’s interest” when sexually explicit depictions show “performers whom no reasonable person could mistake” for a child. FSC II, 787 F.3d at 157. After our decision to remand for the application of strict scrutiny, the Government conceded in the District Court that “the age range where there is a real possibility of mistaking a child for an adult extends to 30 years old,” and highlighted that it had “never taken the position” that children “could be confused for clearly mature adults,” at least when “the individuals depicted are clearly visible in the image.” District 23 Court Docket Index (“D.I.”) 265 at 13. Nor could it have because the Government’s expert on pubertal maturation, Francis Biro, testified at trial that “the vast majority of adults 30 years of age or older could not be mistaken for a minor.” FSC II, 787 F.3d at 156 (quotation marks omitted). Based on that point, the Government argued, if “the Statutes do not survive strict scrutiny in their entirety,” they should be invalidated “only to the extent that they apply to plaintiffs’ production of images showing clearly mature adults over the age of 30.” D.I. 265 at 18 n.12, 19 (capitalization omitted). According to the Government, the Statutes would still “function effectively as an independent whole” because “the core goals” of the Statutes “are served by applying the Statutes to images showing young-looking people, even if no records are required for” performers who are clearly adults. D.I. 265 at 18–19 n.12, 22. Later, at oral argument in this appeal, the Government confirmed that its position for the plaintiffs’ as-applied claims was to limit the Statutes “to images depicting young people under 30 years of age.” (Oral Arg. Tr. 6:3-8.) The Government’s concessions mean that as applied to the plaintiffs, the age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements could be less restrictive if they did not apply when the plaintiffs depict performers who are at least thirty years old and the performer is clearly shown in the depiction. The record confirms that a substantial percentage of the plaintiffs’ performers are at least thirty years old: 55% for 24 Dodson and Ross,7 59.7% for Levine, 40% for Levingston, 52.63% for Nitke, 66.02% for the Sinclair Institute, and 76% for Steinberg. See FSC II, 787 F.3d at 158. Likewise, the “vast majority” of participants in Queen’s live-streamed show were in their thirties and forties. Id. Although the record does not reflect the age breakdowns of the performers in the depictions that Alper creates or the depictions that Hymes posts on his website, the Government bears the burden of disproving the plaintiffs’ proposed alternative. Quite the opposite of making that showing, the Government agrees that all of the “plaintiffs are unlike the mine run of pornography producers because they do not generally cater to the marketplace’s appetite for viewing young-looking people in sexually explicit depictions.” Gov’t Reply Br. 47. For these plaintiffs, then, there is a “less restrictive alternative” that “would serve the Government’s purpose.” United States v. Playboy Ent. Grp., Inc., 529 U.S. 803, 813 (2000). The age verification, recordkeeping, and 7 The Government argues that limiting the Statutes’ requirements to producers of sexually explicit depictions clearly showing performers who are at least thirty years old would not be any less restrictive for plaintiffs Dodson and Ross, specifically, because their website displays anonymous pictures of genitals, so performers are not clearly shown in those images. The Government’s point is not borne out by the record. Dodson and Ross also produce other sexually explicit depictions that do clearly show performers who are at least thirty years old. See D.I. 221 (Trial Tr. 159:16-17, 160:7-12, 162:19–163:18) (Ross testifying that Dodson and Ross have produced sexually explicit depictions showing performers over age thirty). Therefore, under the plaintiffs’ proposed alternative, the Statutes would be less restrictive for these two plaintiffs. 25 labeling requirements restrict the plaintiffs’ “speech without an adequate justification, a course the First Amendment does not permit.” Id. The Government sets out to save the Statutes’ requirements, as applied to the plaintiffs, by relying on a reason we gave when we upheld the Statutes under intermediate scrutiny: the plaintiffs “do not face a substantial additional burden attributable to keeping records for clearly mature performers on top of the records they must maintain for young performers” because “most of the burden” the plaintiffs “face under the Statutes is due to the procedures they must put in place to store, organize, and make available records for performers generally.” FSC II, 787 F.3d at 159. Based on that intermediate scrutiny reasoning, the Government asserts that the age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements should pass strict scrutiny, as well. We are not convinced. The number of older performers employed by the plaintiffs “is not insignificant,” and requiring age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling for depictions of those clearly adult performers “does not protect children.” Id. at 158. Strict scrutiny demands that “[i]f a less restrictive alternative would serve the Government’s purpose, the legislature must use that alternative.” Playboy Ent. Grp., Inc., 529 U.S. at 813. The availability of a less restrictive alternative for these plaintiffs thus makes clear that the age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements violate the First Amendment as applied to them.8 8 The plaintiffs propose several other alternatives to the Statutes’ requirements that they claim would make the Statutes 26 2. Criminal Penalties We consider separately the plaintiffs’ as-applied challenge to the Statutes’ criminal penalties attached to violations of the Statutes’ age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements. The District Court held that the criminal penalties cannot be applied to enforce restrictions that themselves violate the First Amendment. We will affirm, but we reach that conclusion on different grounds than the District Court. The plaintiffs posit that regardless of whether the age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements are constitutional, the attendant statutory criminal penalties should be invalidated under the First Amendment. In the plaintiffs’ view, because the Statutes’ penalties are criminal in kind, they are too harsh and would be less restrictive if they were administrative sanctions instead. The District Court relied on this reasoning when it invalidated the Statutes’ criminal penalties. The plaintiffs’ reasoning does not persuade us. The plaintiffs have not cited any authority for their position that under the First Amendment, we may strike down the penalty for noncompliance with a restriction on speech only because the penalty is criminal in kind. We have not found any authority for that position, either. To the contrary, three reasons lead us to conclude that the Statutes’ penalties do not less restrictive as applied to them. Given our as-applied ruling for the plaintiffs, we need not address those alternatives. 27 offend the First Amendment simply because of their criminal character. First, the kind of penalty that Congress chose is not, by itself, subject to First Amendment review because a penalty for noncompliance with a restriction on speech is not equivalent to a restriction on speech. See Long Beach Area Peace Network v. City of Long Beach, 574 F.3d 1011, 1032–33 (9th Cir. 2009) (distinguishing First Amendment review of an ordinance restricting speech from the “misdemeanor penalty” attached to a violation of the ordinance’s restriction); Christine Jolls, Cass R. Sunstein & Richard Thaler, A Behavioral Approach to Law and Economics, 50 Stan. L. Rev. 1471, 1517 (1998) (“[N]o one has suggested that the First Amendment imposes limits on the severity of punishment for speech that the government is entitled to criminalize.”). The distinction between a restriction on speech and a penalty for a violation of that restriction is central. Whether the consequence for noncompliance with the Statutes is a criminal punishment or an administrative sanction, the Statutes require the plaintiffs to verify performers’ ages and identities, keep records of performers’ identification documents, and label their depictions with the locations of those records. So the Statutes impose no more restrictions on the plaintiffs’ speech because the penalties for noncompliance are criminal, and would impose no fewer restrictions if the penalties were administrative. As a result, the kind of penalty that Congress chose is not a basis to decide that the Statutes could be less restrictive. Second, the plaintiffs’ position does not comport with the Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence. Their position boils down to an assertion that a less severe penalty should be more likely to survive First Amendment review 28 because a less severe penalty is less restrictive of speech. That does not accord with the Supreme Court’s recognition that the First Amendment shields against governmental efforts to restrict free speech even when enforced through “trivial” forms of punishment. Rutan v. Republican Party of Ill., 497 U.S. 62, 75 n.8 (1990). Nor can the plaintiffs’ position be reconciled with the Supreme Court’s determination that even though a state racketeering statute provided “stiffer” and “obviously greater” criminal penalties than the penalties attached to a predicate offense, the difference in the severity of the punishments was not “constitutionally significant” for a First Amendment challenge to the racketeering statute. Fort Wayne Books, Inc. v. Indiana, 489 U.S. 46, 59, 60 (1989). Of course, a severe criminal penalty can have a chilling effect on speech. See Ashcroft II, 542 U.S. at 660 (“Content-based prohibitions, enforced by severe criminal penalties, have the constant potential to be a repressive force in the lives and thoughts of a free people.”). But that deterrent effect, alone, does not warrant invalidating a penalty on First Amendment grounds. See Fort Wayne Books, Inc., 489 U.S. at 59, 60 (rejecting argument that “sanctions imposed” were so “draconian” that they had “an improper chilling effect on First Amendment freedoms” because “[t]he mere assertion of some possible selfcensorship” was “not enough” to render a statute “unconstitutional”). Third, when restrictions of speech survive constitutional scrutiny, it is not for federal courts to limit Congress “in resorting to various weapons in the armory of the law” to enforce those restrictions. Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown, 354 U.S. 436, 441 (1957); accord Fort Wayne Books, Inc., 489 U.S. at 60. Whether violations of the Statutes’ requirements are “to be visited by a criminal prosecution” or some other 29 administrative penalty is “a matter within the legislature’s range of choice.” Kingsley Books, Inc., 354 U.S. at 441. This point carries even greater weight when Congress chooses to rely on criminal penalties for enforcement because “[r]eviewing courts . . . should grant substantial deference to the broad authority that legislatures necessarily possess in determining the types and limits of punishments for crimes.” Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277, 290 (1983); see also United States v. Bajakajian, 524 U.S. 321, 336 (1998) (“[J]udgments about the appropriate punishment for an offense belong in the first instance to the legislature.”); Gore v. United States, 357 U.S. 386, 393 (1958) (“Whatever views may be entertained regarding severity of punishment, . . . these are peculiarly questions of legislative policy.”). On the other hand, the Government may not enforce penalties for noncompliance with laws that the Constitution prohibits. We therefore ultimately arrive at the same conclusion the District Court reached: because we have concluded that the age verification, recordkeeping, and labeling requirements violate the First Amendment as applied to some of the plaintiffs, the criminal penalties for violating those provisions cannot be applied to those plaintiffs, either.