Communications Decency Act

• ENACTED: February 8, 1996
• PLACE: United States (national)

SIGNIFICANCE: Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 revised earlier laws to mandate that telecommunication service providers be held criminally accountable if they fail to censor “indecent material.”

In 1995, Nebraska’s Democratic Senator J. James Exon (1921-2005) responded to increased public concern over the growing use of telecommunications technologies to transmit pornography and to engage children in inappropriate contact with adults by introducing a bill called the Communications Decency Act (1996). Exon complained that the internet contained “not simply nude pictures of ’cheesecake,’ but the most debased, lewd material one can imagine.” There is no valid reason, he said, that “these perverts should be allowed unimpeded on the Internet.” He aimed to “help make the information superhighway safer for kids and families to travel.”

Exon’s bill broadened the protections already existing in the Communications Act of 1934 and increased penalties for their violation. A key aspect of the law was its replacement of the term “telephone” with “telecommunications device” to encompass facsimile (fax) machines, computer modems, and other devices. The act made it a criminal offense to use interactive computer systems to send communications to specific persons, or to persons under eighteen, that depict or describe sexual or excretory activities or organs in manners that might be deemed patently offensive, as measured by local community standards. The law made violations punishable by prison terms and fines up to $250,000. The act specifically excluded from liability telecommunications and information service providers, system operators, and employers who do not knowingly participate in such violations themselves.

Immediately after the act’s original bill was introduced to Congress, it met strong criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); the telecommunication, computer, and publishing industries; and such professional organizations as the American Library Association, the Human Rights Watch, the Association of Publishers, Editors and Writers, the American Booksellers Association, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

On February 1, 1996, Exon’s bill was passed overwhelmingly in both houses of Congress and became part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which President Bill Clinton signed into law a week later. Minutes after the president signed the act, the ACLU and nineteen other groups filed suit in a federal court in Philadelphia to block the new law by challenging its constitutionality. These groups argued that the law would criminalize forms of expression that were protected under the First Amendment.

On June 12, 1996, a federal court voted 3-0 to grant a motion for a preliminary injunction on the law’s “indecency” provisions. The court also found that the act went too far in restricting the First Amendment rights of all computer users in its effort to protect children. On July 1, the Justice Department filed papers in Philadelphia asking the Supreme Court to let the law take effect, as President Clinton and a majority of senators and representatives intended. Conservative groups supporting the act promised to help Congress write new legislation if the lower court’s ruling was allowed to stand.

Bibliography

“American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno, 31 F. Supp. 2d 473 (E.D. Pa. 1999).” Justia, law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/31/473/2516214/. Accessed 27 Aug. 2025.

"EXON, J. James." Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/E000284. Accessed 27 Aug. 2025.

Grey House Publishing, Inc. Internet Law. Grey House Publishing, 2020.

Schwabach, Aaron. Internet and the Law: Technology, Society, and Compromises. 2nd ed., ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2014.

Zeigler, Sara L. "Communications Decency Act and Section 230 (1996)." Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, 5 July 2024, firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/communications-decency-act-and-section-230. Accessed 27 Aug. 2025.