The first step in getting the dumb 2257 record-keeping rules overturned has finally hit as the 6th Circuit Court ruled that 2257 is unconstitutional. The government’s primary argument was that the 2257 laws are pointed at conduct rather than speech, but the Court didn’t buy it.

“This argument is unpersuasive,” Kennedy wrote. “While the government is indeed aiming at conduct, child abuse, it is regulating protected speech, sexually explicit images of adults, to get at that conduct. To the extent the government is claiming that a law is considered a conduct regulation as long as the government claims an interest in conduct and not speech, the Supreme Court has rejected that argument.”
“Adult sexual conduct is not illegal and it is in fact constitutionally protected … The regulation of visual depictions of adult sexual activity is not based on its intrinsic relation to illegal conduct. It is, therefore, a regulation of speech, because both the photograph and the taking of a photograph ‘bear … [a] necessary relationship to the freedom to speak, write, print or distribute information or opinion.’”