Cite as: 535 U. S. 564 (2002)
Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment
lieve" the other, it is a good indication that we should vacate for further consideration.
The District Court attempted a comprehensive analysis of COPA and its various dimensions of potential overbreadth. The Court of Appeals, however, believed that its own analysis of "contemporary community standards" obviated all other concerns. It dismissed the District Court's analysis in a footnote:
"[W]e do not find it necessary to address the District Court's analysis of the definition of 'commercial purposes'; whether the breadth of the forms of content covered by COPA could have been more narrowly tailored; whether the affirmative defenses impose too great a burden on Web publishers or whether those affirmative defenses should have been included as elements of the crime itself; whether COPA's inclusion of criminal as well as civil penalties was excessive; whether COPA is designed to include communications made in chat rooms, discussion groups and links to other Web sites; whether the government is entitled to so restrict communications when children will continue to be able to access foreign Web sites and other sources of material that is harmful to them; what taken 'as a whole' should mean in the context of the Web and the Internet; or whether the statute's failure to distinguish between material that is harmful to a six year old versus a sixteen year old is problematic." 217 F. 3d, at 174, n. 19.
As I have explained, however, any problem caused by variation in community standards cannot be evaluated in a vacuum. In order to discern whether the variation creates substantial overbreadth, it is necessary to know what speech COPA regulates and what community standards it invokes.
It is crucial, for example, to know how limiting is the Act's limitation to "communication for commercial purposes." 47 U. S. C. § 231(e)(2)(A). In Reno, we remarked that COPA's
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