Judge Blocks Online "Harmful to Children" Law

Free-speech advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have convinced a federal judge to hobble a Vermont law that prohibits the online transmission to children of certain sexually oriented images and text. U.S. District Court Judge Garvan Murtha, in a ruling from Brattleboro, Vt., agreed with the ACLU and groups that included the publishers of sex-education Web site SexualHealth.com, that the year-old Vermont law trampled on First Amendment rights with a broad definition of nudity and sexually explicit material summed up as "harmful to children."