What is the 'do no harm' position on the First Amendment in cyberspace?
On Monday in Packingham v. North Carolina, the justices unanimously (minus Gorsuch) voted to invalidate a North Carolina statute making it a felony for a registered sex offender "to access a commercial social networking Web site where the sex offender knows that the site permits minor children to become members or to create or maintain personal Web pages." But Justice Alito, joined by Roberts and Thomas, concurred only in the judgment. All eight Justices agreed that the statute wasn't sufficiently tailored. Both opinions emphasized the possible application of the statute to Amazon.com, washingtonpost.com, and webmd.com.
So where did the opinions differ? The central disagreement between the two opinions is how judges applying the First Amendment should respond to the changing nature of cyberspace. From the majority:
While we now may be coming to the realization that the Cyber Age is a revolution of historic proportions, we cannot appreciate yet its full dimensions and vast potential to alter how we think, express ourselves, and define who we want to be. The forces and directions of the Internet are so new, so protean, and so far reaching that courts must be conscious that what they say today might be obsolete tomorrow.
This case is one of the first this Court has taken to address the relationship between the First Amendment and the modern Internet. As a result, the Court must exercise extreme caution before suggesting that the First Amendment provides scant protection for access to vast networks in that medium.
And from the concurrence:
The Court is correct that we should be cautious in applying our free speech precedents to the internet. Ante, at 6. Cyberspace is different from the physical world, and if it is true, as the Court believes, that "we cannot appreciate yet" the "full dimensions and vast potential" of "the Cyber Age," ibid., we should proceed circumspectly, taking one step at a time. It is regrettable that the Court has not heeded its own admonition of caution.
The majority's point that "that what [courts] say today might be obsolete tomorrow" is an important one that I discussed in the Internet context almost 20(!) years ago in Stepping into the Same River Twice: Rapidly Changing Facts and the Appellate Process.
But I want here to highlight a slightly different point. When it comes to changing phenomena (like cyberspace), what is the best default position with respect to the First Amendment? Should judges err on the side of starchy application of free speech tests, or a more flexible approach? This are not new questions. For instance, back in 1996, in Denver Area Education Telecommunications Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, the Supreme Court considered regulation of indecency on public access and leased access channels. Justice Souter wrote a concurrence suggesting that, in the fast-changing world of telecommunications, judges should heed the admonition "First, do no harm." Justice Kennedy responded: "Justice Souter recommends to the Court the precept, 'First, do no harm.' The question, though, is whether the harm is in sustaining the law or striking it down." As I noted in a different article, "the injunction '[f]irst, do no harm' provides little guidance unless we can identify what the 'do no harm' position is."
In Monday's case, Justice Kennedy's majority opinion, consistent with his concurrence in Denver Area and his First Amendment jurisprudence more generally, treats broad and rigorous application of First Amendment tests as the "do no harm" position in the ever-changing world of cyberspace. Justice Alito's concurrence wants a default that takes smaller steps and gives judges (and thus legislatures) more flexibility. Obviously there is no ineluctable answer here. But, once again, baselines are doing a lot of work.