Supreme Court weighs law banning sex offenders from Facebook

[...] the Supreme Court's task is deciding whether the law, meant to prevent communications between sex offenders and minors via social media, is so broad that it violates the Constitution's free-speech protections.

The law addressed websites that might allow sex offenders to gather information about minors, the state court said.

Groups including the libertarian Cato Institute and the American Civil Liberties Union argue the North Carolina law could ban sex offenders from online life that includes looking for jobs or reading the daily musings of President Donald Trump and is unconstitutional.

Though the intent of North Carolina lawmakers may have been to block sexual predators from finding and grooming prey online, Goldberg said the law goes further and makes it a crime for someone on a sex-offender registry to say anything about any subject on social media.

The law's supporters contend that it doesn't regulate what sex offenders say, just the time, place and manner of their speech, which most people understand through the legal maxim that you can't yell "fire" in a crowded movie theater.

The law doesn't ban offenders from using the internet entirely, just social media sites like Facebook, said Louisiana Deputy Solicitor General Colin A. Clark, who wrote a brief supporting the law joined by attorneys general in 12 other states.

States are trying "to come up with a practical solution to the practical problem of sex offenders being on social media and harvesting information about our children and then soliciting them online," he said.