LEGISLATION

Search by year:

select year...2012201120102009200820072005200420032000199719961995

Search by state:

Please select Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District Of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Alaska S.B. 222 and H.B. 298: Criminalizing Sexual Speech on the Internet

Most recent news: Alaska Governor Sean Parnell signed S.B. 222 into law on May 14, 2010. Members of Media Coalition are currently challenging the law as an unconstitutionally overbroad restriction on speech in U.S. District Court. Click here to learn more about the case, ABFFE v. Burns (Previously ABFFE v. Sullivan).

Legislative History

Senate Bill: Under the original S.B. 222, proposed in March 2010, booksellers and librarians could have faced felony charges for selling or loaning a book, magazine, or DVD with even mild or educational sexual content to a person under the age of 16. The passage of such a law would have had a chilling effect on content creators and distributors who produce and disseminate age-appropriate and culturally significant books, magazines, movies, and other media. The bill's provisions also apply these restrictions to Internet transmissions. Media Coalition sent a memo in opposition to the bill in March.

Read Media Coalition's Memo in Opposition to the Original Version of Senate Bill 222

On  April 2, Media Coalition sent a letter in opposition to the bill to Senator French, the chair of the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee.

At a hearing on April 5, the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee took up a substitute version of S.B. 222, which substantially improved the flawed bill. The substitute version amends S.B. 222 to add the three prong Miller/Ginsberg test to the present law governing sexually explicit material. The Senate bill also excludes the provision, included in the House bill, that bans as child pornography material that appears to depict minors engaged in sexual conduct or lascivious nudity.

The substitute bill's "harmful to minors" provision still applies to general speech on the Internet. Material posted on websites, blogs, generally accessible listservs, and social networking sites that is deemed harmful to minors is thus criminalized under the substitute bill. Additionally, the substitute version does not revoke S.B. 222's application to traditional media like books, magazines, and films.

Substitute Version of S.B. 222

On April 6, Media Coalition sent a second letter to Senator French outlining the constitutional problems that remain in the substitute version of S.B. 222, concentrating primarily on Section 8. Media Coalition also sent letters to both the House and Senate Finance Committees on April 12 and 9, respectively, asking the Committees to amend the bill's problematic sections.

Letter to House Finance Committee

Letter to Senate Finance Committee

On April 11, the Senate engrossed the substitute version of S.B. 222 and sent if for consideration by the House.

Read S.B. 222 as Passed

Governor Sean Parnell signed Alaska Senate Bill 222 into law on May 14, 2010.

 House Bill: Before Alaska's House Bill 298 underwent a serious amendment process,  the proposed legislation sought to criminalize all distribution - whether electronic or physical - by adults to minors of material featuring any sort of sexual content. The bill as originally written would have criminalized librarians, booksellers and even parents for selling, renting or loaning to minors material with sexual imagery, including age-appropriate sex education books, art anthologies featuring nudes, the Oscar-winning film Titanic or screen adaptations of Romeo and Juliet. 

Memo in Opposition to H.B. 298

During the amendment process, H.B. 298 was amended to encompass only those works that, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interests of minors and lack serious artistic, literary, political, or scientific value for minors. But two constitutionally questionable provisions remained in the amended proposal. First, H.B. 298 bans the electronic dissemination of sexual material, including material posted on generally accessible web sites. Second, another provision in the bill bans the sale of material that "appears" to show a minor engaged in sexual conduct. The Supreme Court has struck down restrictions on such depictions, since they do not cause harm to minors.

Memo in Opposition to the Twice-Amended H.B. 298

The House bill was eventually abandoned when the legislature took up an amended version of the Senate bill.

updated 4/12/10