The case of John Ashcroft, Attorney General v. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), et al., 2001 revolved around the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) which was enacted by Congress in 1998 to protect minors from harmful material on the internet. The ACLU challenged this law arguing that it violated adults' rights to free speech under the First Amendment. They claimed COPA's requirements were too broad and could potentially restrict access to a wide range of legal, adult-oriented web content. In response, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft defended COPA as necessary for protecting children online. In its decision, the Supreme Court sided with ACLU stating that less restrictive alternatives should be considered before resorting to such sweeping measures like those proposed in COPA. It held that filters and other user-based blocking tools might serve as effective ways of shielding minors from inappropriate content without infringing upon adults’ constitutional rights.

In the dissenting opinion for Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was unconstitutional because it violated First Amendment rights to free speech. He contended that COPA's use of "community standards" to determine what material is harmful to minors was overly broad and could lead to a chilling effect on internet content providers who would self-censor out of fear of prosecution. Furthermore, he believed there were less restrictive alternatives available such as filtering software which parents can install on their own computers rather than imposing criminal penalties on content providers. In his view, these measures would be more effective in protecting children from inappropriate online material without infracring upon adults' constitutional rights.