Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U.S. 564, 30 (2002)

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

Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment

familiar in other media, but more difficult to define on the World Wide Web. It is unclear whether what is to be judged as a whole is a single image on a Web page, a whole Web page, an entire multipage Web site, or an interlocking set of Web sites. Some examination of the group of covered speakers and the categories of covered speech is necessary in order to comprehend the extent of the alleged overbreadth.

The Court of Appeals found that COPA in effect subjects every Internet speaker to the standards of the most puritanical community in the United States. This concern is a real one, but it alone cannot suffice to invalidate COPA without careful examination of the speech and the speakers within the ambit of the Act. For this reason, I join the judgment of the Court vacating the opinion of the Court of Appeals and remanding for consideration of the statute as a whole. Unlike Justice Thomas, however, I would not assume that the Act is narrow enough to render the national variation in community standards unproblematic. Indeed, if the District Court correctly construed the statute across its other dimensions, then the variation in community standards might well justify enjoining enforcement of the Act. I would leave that question to the Court of Appeals in the first instance.

II

COPA provides a three-part conjunctive definition of "material that is harmful to minors." The first part of the definition is that "the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, [that it] is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest." 47 U. S. C. § 231(e)(6)(A). (The parties agree that the second part of the definition, § 231(e)(6)(B), likewise invokes contemporary community standards, though only implicitly. See ante, at 576, n. 7.) The nub of the problem is, as the Court has said, that "the 'community standards' criterion as applied to the Internet means that any communication available to

593

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