Opinion ID: 2975947
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Type of Speech at Issue

Text: Before engaging in the overbreadth analysis, we must first identify whether the expression at issue is conduct or speech. Conduct is generally considered more amenable to regulation than speech, because while particular conduct could be expressive, it may not be inherently expressive like speech. See Free Speech Coal., 535 U.S. at 253 (“To preserve [free speech] freedoms, and to protect speech for its own sake, the Court’s First Amendment cases draw vital distinctions between words and deeds, between ideas and conduct.”); Broadrick, 413 U.S. at 615 (noting that a statute must be substantially overbroad, particularly where conduct is concerned); see also Cameron v. Johnson, 390 U.S. 611, 617 (1968) (upholding a law on the basis that it regulates conduct that is not inherently expressive and therefore only tangentially and insubstantially burdens speech). The government argues that the recordkeeping requirements are simply aimed at conduct, because it seeks to reduce child abuse by its regulation. Indeed, the Supreme Court recognized in Ferber that the very reason child pornography can be regulated is because it is so closely tied to the conduct, child abuse, which the government was trying to stamp out. Ferber, 458 U.S. at 761. The D.C. Circuit accepted the government’s argument, and therefore evaluated the statute at issue under the O’Brien standard. Am. Library Ass’n v. Reno, 33 F.3d 78, 87 (D.C. Cir. 1994). This argument is unpersuasive. While the government is indeed aiming at conduct, child abuse, it is regulating protected speech, sexually explicit images of adults, to get at that conduct. To the extent the government is claiming that a law is considered a conduct regulation as long as the government claims an interest in conduct and not speech, the Supreme Court has rejected that argument. See, e.g., Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 150 (1939) (holding that the government cannot ban handbills, speech, to vindicate its interest in preventing littering, conduct). The expression at issue here is not conduct, it is speech. Images, including photographs, are protected by the First Amendment as speech as much as “words in books” and “oral utterance[s].” Kaplan v. California, 413 U.S. 147, 119-20 (1973). Indeed, visual images are “a primitive but effective way of communicating ideas . . . a short cut from mind to mind.” W. Va. State Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 632 (1943). Even if the government tried to characterize the regulation as aimed at the conduct of pressing the button on a camera or other recording device to create images, that conduct would be so closely tied to the speech produced, and the government’s interest here is in the speech produced, that it would be better considered to be a speech regulation. Child abuse, the actual conduct in which the government is interested, is already illegal. Child pornography, while speech, can be considered more like conduct because the conduct depicted is illegal, and if that illegality did not occur, no images of child pornography would be created. No. 06-3822 Connection Distributing Co., et al. v. Keisler Page 9 Ferber, 458 U.S. at 762 (“We note that were the statutes outlawing the employment of children in these films and photographs fully effective, and the constitutionality of these laws has not been questioned, the First Amendment implications would be no greater than that presented by laws against distribution: enforceable production laws would leave no child pornography to be marketed.”). Banning the images of child pornography, therefore, is not a burden on speech, and can therefore be considered more of a conduct regulation, because the speech would not be created absent the illegal conduct. This reasoning would not necessarily apply to all pictures of illegal conduct, such as a newspaper article accompanied by a photograph of a person being mugged. Child pornography is different from other photographs of illegal conduct because the images more directly relate to the illegal conduct; when an individual is taking photographs of child abuse, it is likely that the taking of pictures is a motivator of the illegal conduct, and therefore the speech is more “intrinsically related” to the conduct. Ferber, 458 U.S. at 759-60; cf. Free Speech Coal, 535 U.S. at 250 (“Virtual child pornography is not ‘intrinsically related’ to the sexual abuse of children, as were the materials in Ferber.”). This analysis of child pornography, that it is closer to conduct and not speech, does not control when determining whether images of adult sexual conduct are speech or conduct. Adult sexual conduct is not illegal and it is in fact constitutionally protected. See, e.g., Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003). The regulation of visual depictions of adult sexual activity is not based on its intrinsic relation to illegal conduct. It is, therefore, a regulation of speech, because both the photograph and the taking of a photograph “bear[] [a] necessary relationship to the freedom to speak, write, print or distribute information or opinion.” Schneider, 308 U.S. 147, 150 (1939). This leads us to the overbreadth considerations.