Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U.S. 564 (2002), followed by 542 U.S. 656 (2004), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court, ruling that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. Background In 1996 Congress passed the Communications Decency Act (CDA). The CDA prohibited the use of the Internet to purposely send indecent material to those under 18 years of age. In 1997 the Supreme Court unanimously struck down the anti-indecency provisions of the CDA in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, because in the CDA lacked the precision necessary for any regulation of speech. Congress attempted to address the issue of Internet pornography with a new and more specific statute the following year. Child Online Protection Act The Child Online Protection Act (COPA), passed in 1998, was Congress's second attempt to criminalize the use of the Internet to distribute obscene material, including pornography, simulated pornography, and pornographic artwork. COPA enforced a $50,000 fine and six months in prison for the posting for "commercial purposes" of content on the internet that is "harmful to minors". COPA attempted to be more specific than the "harmful to children" provisions of its predecessor statute, and made it illegal for any commercial sources to allow minors access to obscene content, drawing on language from the landmark Miller v. California ruling at the Supreme Court to better define the term "obscenity." Material that is "harmful to minors" was defined as: Thus, COPA was narrower and more precise that the CDA because it attempted to make use of the Miller Test to find "obscene" Internet material that could be regulated. Opponents of COPA argued that child pornography was already illegal, and COPA would not be effective because it would waste too much time going after individual sites within the US that could simply set up shop overseas if shut down. It was also argued that COPA would infringe upon the rights of adults to receive legal (but perhaps inappropriate for children) content voluntarily, and that COPA was not the least pervasive or most efficient way to protect children from inappropriate online content. Procedural history In 1999, Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted a preliminary injunction blocking COPA enforcement. This ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In 2000,