Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U.S. 564, 22 (2002)

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Cite as: 535 U. S. 564 (2002)

Opinion of the Court

tent restricted by COPA in a manner analogous to Miller's definition of obscenity, we conclude, consistent with our holdings in Hamling and Sable, that any variance caused by the statute's reliance on community standards is not substantial enough to violate the First Amendment.

IV

The scope of our decision today is quite limited. We hold only that COPA's reliance on community standards to identify "material that is harmful to minors" does not by itself render the statute substantially overbroad for purposes of the First Amendment. We do not express any view as to whether COPA suffers from substantial overbreadth for other reasons, whether the statute is unconstitutionally vague, or whether the District Court correctly concluded that the statute likely will not survive strict scrutiny analy-Curiae 4-10). Justice Stevens, however, is not even willing to represent that these anecdotes relate to material restricted under COPA, see post, at 611, and we understand his reluctance for the vast majority of the works cited in that brief, if not all of them, are likely unaffected by the statute. See Brief for Volunteer Lawyer for the Arts et al. as Amici Curiae 4-10 (describing, among other incidents, controversies in various communities regarding Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, 1993 Academy Award Best Picture nominee The Piano, the American Broadcasting Corporation television network's NYPD Blue, and songs of the "popular folk-rock duo" the Indigo Girls). These anecdotes are therefore of questionable relevance to the matter at hand and certainly do not constitute a sufficient basis for invalidating a federal statute.

Moreover, we do not agree with Justice Kennedy's suggestion that it is necessary for the Court of Appeals to revisit this question upon remand. See post, at 597-599. The lack of evidence in the record relevant to the question presented does not indicate that "we should vacate for further consideration." Post, at 599. Rather, it indicates that respondents, by offering little more than "speculation," have failed to meet their burden of demonstrating in this facial challenge that COPA's reliance on community standards renders the statute substantially overbroad.

585

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