A federal judge on Friday signed an order permanently preventing Louisiana from enforcing a state law [text, PDF] that required websites to age-verify every Internet user before providing access to non-obscene material that could be deemed harmful to any minor. The 2015 Louisiana law required that “any person or entity in Louisiana that publishes material harmful to minors on the Internet shall, prior to permitting access to the material, require any person attempting to access the material to electronically acknowledge and attest that the person seeking to access the material is eighteen years of age or older.” Judge Brian Jackson previously granted a preliminary injunction in April stating that the complaint [text, PDF] filed by the plaintiffs, a group of book sellers and publishers represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana [advocacy website], was likely to succeed in proving that the law was unconstitutional for violating the First Amendment by placing severe burdens on booksellers and publishers.

In 2012 a federal judge overturned [JURIST report] major parts of a Utah law that regulated electronic materials potentially harmful to minors. In 2008 the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed [JURIST report] a district court’s decision to strike down the federal Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which held website operators who made sexually obscene materials available to children civilly and criminally liable. That court found that COPA did not pass strict scrutiny because it was not narrowly tailored to the legitimate interest in protecting children, as there were less restrictive means available.