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Williams v. U.S. 553 U.S. 285 Vote: 7-2 Opinion: Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion; Justices Roberts, Stevens, Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, and Alito joined. Justice Stevens wrote a concurring opinion; Justice Breyer joined. Justice Souter wrote the dissenting opinion; Justice Ginsburg joined. Facts: In 2004, a special agent, under the username Lisa_n_Miami, entered a private chat room focused on child exploitation. Williams, under the username Twatjuicesucker2004 posted a comment saying Dad of toddler has 'good' pic's of her and me for swap for your toddlers pics, or live cam. After seeing this comment, the special agent entered a private message conversation with him. ! During the very obscene conversation, Williams claimed many things like having pictures of his 2 year old daughter and allowing people to engage in sexual activity with her for a small price. He also stated that he had pictures of sexual activity with an 11 month girl and had nude pictures of his daughter on his computer. He not only sent photographs of a 2-3 year old girl in a bathing suit to the special agent but he also had a photo album section on his prole of a white female child exposed. Williams then posted a link in the chatroom of a Yahoo! briefcase that contained photographs of nude children between the ages of 5-15 either engaged in sexual activity or nude. ! The Special agent got a subpoena for the customer information on the username from Yahoo and later from AT&T WorldNet Services. After a search warrant of his house, they found 2 computers with images of children under 18 engaged in sexual activity. They did not nd the pictures he claimed he had of his daughter and himself. Williams was convicted of pandering (promoting) child pornography in the federal district court. Williams appealed it to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th circuit court claiming the pandering provision in the PROTECT act was too broad. They reversed the lower court decision and claimed that the statute was both overbroad under the First Amendment and vague under the Due Process Clause. Decision: The court decided that the federal statute prohibiting the pandering of child pornography was not unconstitutionally overbroad. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision was reversed. Rationale: The pandering section in the PROTECT act prohibits offers to provide and request to obtain child porn. It does not include the material but not the speech on the child porn network. Essentially, any internet user who solicits child pornography from an undercover agent violates the statute, even if the ofcer possesses no child pornography. Any offers to engage in illegal transactions, under obscene speech, is excluded from First Amendment protection. ! It is also not impermissibly vague under the Due Process Clause. A conviction fails to be in violation of due process if the statute under which it is obtained fails to provide a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice of what is prohibited. What makes

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a statute vague is the indeterminacy of what the fact is. In this case there was no indeterminacy; there were clear questions of fact. Importance: This case upheld the PROTECT act. Judge Scalia, who wrote the majority, said that Offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography are categorically excluded from the First Amendment.This act represents the challenge that technology has in our legal system. This statute is open to broad interpretation for future cases that involve child pornography and the evolving technology.