Packingham v. North Carolina Case Brief Summary | Law Case Explained
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Packingham v. North Carolina | 450 A.2d 984 (Super.Pa. 1981)
Statutes that restrict speech can be content-based or content-neutral. Content-neutral restrictions are based on factors such as the time, place, or manner in which the speech occurs, regardless of content. Traditional examples deal with physical places, but what about online? In Packingham versus North Carolina, the United States Supreme Court was faced with bringing First Amendment ideas into the age of the Internet.
A North Carolina law made it a felony for registered sex offenders to access commercial social-networking websites if the sex offender knows that the website allows minors to become members or maintain personal pages.
The statute’s definition of a commercial social-networking website had four criteria. The site’s operator must get revenue from membership fees, advertising, or other site-related sources. The site must allow people to be introduced for purposes of friendship, meeting others, or exchanging information. Users on the site can create web pages or profiles that include their name, photos, and other personal information. The sites must also provide users with a method for communicating, such as a chat room, message board, or messenger feature. Common examples of sites satisfying these criteria include Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
The statute didn’t include websites with the primary purpose of enabling commercial transactions between members and site visitors, or sites that had only one service from the categories of photo-sharing, email, instant messaging, or chat room and message board platforms.
Lester Gerard Packingham, a twenty-one-year-old college student in North Carolina, had sex with a thirteen-year-old. He pleaded guilty to taking indecent liberties with a child and registered as a sex offender.
Eight years later, Packingham had a traffic ticket dismissed in state court and made a post on his Facebook profile praising God for this positive traffic-court experience. His profile name was J R Gerrard. A police officer found the post while investigating sex offenders that might be violating the state statute and confirmed it was Packingham. There was no evidence Packingham had used the internet to contact a minor.
Packingham was indicted by a grand jury for violating the statute. Packingham moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing the statute violated the First Amendment. The trial court denied the motion. Packingham was convicted. He appealed. The North Carolina Court of Appeals struck down the statute on First Amendment grounds. North Carolina appealed. The state supreme court reversed and found the law constitutional. The United States Supreme Court granted cert.
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