JUSTICES PLUNGE INTO THE INTERNET : SUPREME COURT WILL RULE ON INDECENCY.

Byline: Linda Greenhouse The New York Times

Setting the stage for a landmark ruling on the constitutional dimensions of free speech in cyberspace, the Supreme Court on Friday agreed to a full review of whether the new federal law regulating indecency on the Internet violates the First Amendment.

The justices agreed to hear an appeal by the Clinton administration from a ruling in June by a special three-judge federal court in Philadelphia, which blocked enforcement of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

The panel ruled that the law, which makes it a crime to display indecent material on an interactive computer network ``in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age,'' was both unconstitutionally vague and too broadly written to be justified by the government's interest in protecting the welfare of children.

The Communications Decency Act, which Congress passed, without hearings, as a last-minute addition to a major telecommunications bill, defines indecency as material that ``depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs.''

Under the court's precedents, indecent speech - unlike obscenity, which the court has defined as speech lacking in any social value - is entitled to First Amendment protection. But it may be regulated to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the medium.

The basic question for the court in this case is where, on the spectrum of free speech, the global computer network known as the Internet belongs: whether it is analogous to radio and television, where indecent speech may be restricted for the purpose of shielding children, or whether its special qualities entitle it to the full First Amendment protection accorded the press.

The three-judge court in Philadelphia accepted the argument made by a broad coalition of plaintiffs that speech on the Internet deserved the highest constitutional protection.

Judge Stewart Dalzell of U.S. District Court, in his separate opinion as a member of the panel, said the Communications Decency Act was no more acceptable than would be a ``newspaper decency act'' regulating the press or a ``novel decency act'' regulating ``potboilers in convenience-store book racks.''

The three judges, who also included Chief Judge Dolores Sloviter of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Ronald Buckwalter, a federal district judge, all agreed that the law would have the inevitable result of restricting the ways in which adults may speak to one another in cyberspace.

``Many speakers who display arguably indecent content on the Internet must choose between silence and the risk of prosecution,'' the court said in a joint part of the opinion.

A violation of the Communications Decency Act carries penalties of up to two years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

In July another three-judge federal court, in New York, ruling in a separate lawsuit, also blocked enforcement of the law.

That panel, consisting of Judge Jose Cabranes of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and two federal district judges, Leonard Sand and Denise Cote, did not find the law unconstitutionally vague, but they did find it fatally overbroad as a ``ban on constitutionally protected indecent communication between adults.''

The New York panel said it was ``inescapable'' that the Communications Decency Act ``will serve to chill protected speech.''

The Clinton administration appealed both rulings. The court did not act Friday in the New York case, Reno vs. Shea, No. 96-595, and will evidently hold that case for decision in light of its resolution of the Philadelphia case, Reno vs. American Civil Liberties Union, No. 96-511, by early next summer. The case will be argued in March.

There had been little doubt that the court would agree, in one case or the other, to decide the issue. To address doubts about the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act, Congress made the law a subject of mandatory Supreme Court review, placing the anticipated challenges on a fast track with only one stop at a lower federal court instead of the usual two.