Packingham v. North Carolina
2017 United States Supreme Court case / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Packingham v. North Carolina, 582 U.S. 98 (2017), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a North Carolina statute that prohibited registered sex offenders from using social media websites was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects freedom of speech.[1]
Packingham v. North Carolina | |
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Argued February 27, 2017 Decided June 19, 2017 | |
Full case name | Lester Gerard Packingham, Petitioner v. North Carolina |
Docket no. | 15–1194 |
Citations | 582 U.S. 98 (more) 137 S. Ct. 1730; 198 L. Ed. 2d 273 |
Argument | Oral argument |
Opinion announcement | Opinion announcement |
Case history | |
Prior | State v. Packingham, 368 N.C. 380, 777 S.E.2d 738 (2015); cert. granted, 137 S. Ct. 368 (2016). |
Holding | |
A statute prohibiting registered sex offenders from accessing social media websites impermissibly restricts lawful speech in violation of the First Amendment. | |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Kennedy, joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan |
Concurrence | Alito (in judgment), joined by Roberts, Thomas |
Gorsuch took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. | |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amend. I |
In 2010, Lester Gerard Packingham, a registered sex offender, posted on Facebook under a pseudonym to comment favorably on a recent traffic court experience. Police then identified Packingham and charged him with violating North Carolina's law. Packingham moved to dismiss the charges, arguing that the state's law violated the First Amendment. The trial court dismissed this motion and ultimately convicted Packingham. A state appellate court initially reversed the trial court, holding that the law did violate the First Amendment, but the North Carolina Supreme Court, the state's highest court, disagreed and reinstated the conviction.
In June 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed the North Carolina Supreme Court's judgment. In the majority opinion authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court held that social media—defined broadly to include Facebook, Amazon.com, The Washington Post, and WebMD—is a "protected space" under the First Amendment for lawful speech.[2] The Court offered that North Carolina could protect children through less restrictive means, such as prohibiting "conduct that often presages a sexual crime, like contacting a minor or using a website to gather information about a minor".[3]