United States v. Matthews

United States v. Matthews was a 2000 case in which the Fourth Circuit ruled that the First Amendment provides no defense to a charge of sending and receiving child pornography over the Internet for a journalist who did so only to research a news story. The court ruled:

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Matthews' asserted First Amendment defense--a derivation of the Miller standard from the obscenity context--misses the fundamental distinction between child pornography and adult pornography that the Ferber Court sought to draw. The government has an interest in prohibiting the dissemination of both. But the government's interest in prohibiting the distribution of adult pornography--to protect "the sensibilities of unwilling recipients," Miller, 413 U.S. at 19--pales in comparison to its interest in prohibiting the dissemination of child pornography--to prevent "sexual exploitation and abuse of children." Ferber, 458 U.S. at 757. When adult pornography, taken as a whole, has some "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value," Miller, 413 U.S. at 24, that value ameliorates its affront to "the sensibilities of unwilling recipients." In contrast, any literary, artistic, political, scientific (or journalistic) value of child pornography does nothing to ameliorate its harm to children. Ferber holds that while the government can ban only obscene adult pornography (that which, taken as a whole, "lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value"), the government can ban child pornography even if not obscene. 458 U.S. at 764. In other words, although the obscenity test for adult pornography contains the type of First Amendment defense that Matthews urges us to recognize, the Ferber Court unequivocally rejected such a defense in the context of child pornography offenses.

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