However, in ruling on the suit, filed February 8 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups, U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Buckwalter said his order applied only to enforcement of penalties against indecent materials, and not obscene ones.
Buckwalter said the law, known as the Communications Decency Act, failed to define "indecent" sufficiently and may be too vague to be constitutional.
"Where I do feel that the plaintiffs have raised serious, substantial, difficult and doubtful questions is in their agrument that the (legislation) is unconstitutionally vague in the use of the undefined term 'indecent,' Buckwalter said.
The ACLU's suit against the act and request for a preliminary injunction blocking it will now be heard by a three-judge district court panel under an expedited procedure that would enable any subsequent appeal to be heard directly by the U.S. Supreme Court.
"It's a partial victory," said Stefan Presser, legal director of the Philadelphia ACLU chapter. He said the group would continue to fight the obscenity provisions of the act.
A date for the next court hearing has not been set.
Opponents of the legislation contend the law was technologically impossible to meet and would unfairly hamper free expression over mushrooming computer networks such as the Internet by penalizing a potentially wide variety of sexual-related information.
The Justice Department argued in a brief filed on Wednesday that the act was clearly worded to apply only to "patently offensive" material and aimed only to keep it inaccessible by children. It said such provisions were constitutionally valid.
But Buckwalter said in his ruling, "depending on who is making the judgment, indecent could include a whole range of conduct not encompassed by 'patently offensive."
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