----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fight-Censorship Dispatch #15 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Justice Department Appeals! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Declan McCullagh / declan@well.com / Redistribute freely ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- June 27, 1996 WASHINGTON, DC -- With no fanfare and no hype, the Justice Department yesterday faxed a 39-word statement to Senator Exon saying they will appeal their loss in the Philadelphia case. The consolidated lawsuits of ACLU v. Reno and ALA v. DoJ resulted in a victory for the plaintiffs earlier this month after a three-judge panel granted a preliminary injunction preventing the DoJ from enforcing the Communications Decency Act. I didn't know about this letter until about 15 minutes ago, when Bruce "I wrote the CDA" Taylor showed up outside my office for a HotWired Club Wired chat at 9 pm this evening. Taylor was grinning. "I got a scoop for you guys. You owe me. Nobody but Senator Exon would have gotten this letter out of the department." For a while, netizens were worrying that the DoJ might appeal the New York American Reporter v. Reno case, a narrower and weaker appeal that only challenged part of the CDA. This letter means that the ACLU/ALA case is definitely going to the Supremes, which will likely result in a decision a year from now. Stay tuned for more reports, and check in at Club Wired for the Taylor transcript. He says it'll be a "roast." We'll see... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Office of the Deputy Attorney General Washington, DC 20530 June 26, 1996 The Honorable J. James Exon United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator Exon: With regard to your request as to the status of the appeal on ACLU v. Reno, this letter is to inform you that the Department of Justice will file a Notice of Appeal on or before the July 2 deadline. Sincerely [signed] Jamie S. Gorelick Deputy Attorney General ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mentioned in this CDA update: HotWired Club Wired: http://www.hotwired.com/eff/ Deputy Atty Gen Jamie Gorelick's speech slamming Net, calling for controls: http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/dl?num=2733 Bruce Taylor's amicus "finger" brief in NYC CDA lawsuit: http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/dl?num=2736 Fight-Censorship list <http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/top/> Rimm ethics critique <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/rimm/> Int'l Net-Censorship <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/international/> Justice on Campus <http://joc.mit.edu/> This document and previous Fight-Censorship Dispatches are archived at: <http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/top/> To subscribe to future Fight-Censorship Dispatches and related announcements, send "subscribe fight-censorship-announce" in the body of a message addressed to: majordomo@vorlon.mit.edu Other relevant web sites: <http://www.vtw.org/> <http://www.cpsr.org/> <http://www.epic.org/> <http://www.aclu.org/> <http://www.cdt.org/> <http://www.ala.org/> <http://www.eff.org/> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------