American Civil Liberties Union v. Miller

Among those objecting to Georgia's legislation were the ACLU, Electronic Frontiers Georgia, Electronic Founders Foundations, as well as politically conservative Georgia State Representative, Mitchell Kaye. The diversity of co-plaintiffs was highlighted by the participation of the Atlanta Veterans Alliance--a Georgia-based organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered veterans. Although politically opposites, the various parties nonetheless agreed that the statute was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad because it barred online users from using pseudonyms or communicating anonymously over the Internet. At a joint press conference held by the plaintiffs in Atlanta, Rep. Kaye explained he became involved after his private web site came under attack by some members of the Georgia House of Representatives. Kaye maintained they felt threatened because his site featured voting records along with political commentary not always flattering. At the conference, Teresa Nelson, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, announced the ACLU would take the lead in filing a complaint requesting a preliminary injunction to prevent enforcement of Georgia's newly-passed Internet fraud statute.

The complaint filed by the ACLU in September of 1996, claimed that, "The law makes it a crime to use a name that `falsely' identifies a speaker on the Internet, without distinguishing whether the person communicating had any intent to deceive or defraud or simply wanted to keep his or her identity unknown." The ACLU argued the act did not define important terms like "use" nor was the statute clear about using trade names, logos, or other trademark symbols commonly used to link web sites to one another.

The ACLU stressed the importance of anonymous Internet communications explaining that false names or pseudonyms eliminated the potential for discrimination and harassment according to gender or ethnicity. The ACLU argued, "It is a necessary security measure. The personal safety of human rights dissidents, domestic violence victims, and whistle-blowers would be compromised if they could not communicate anonymously."

On 30 January 1997, the case was argued before Marvin H. Shoob, Senior Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The crux of the state's argument was that, as written, the statute was meant to be interpreted to only forbid fraudulent transmissions over the Internet. The intent of the statute was to prevent misappropriation of the identity of another person or entity for improper purposes.

The State of Georgia argued a motion to dismiss for two reasons. First, since no one individual or organization named as plaintiffs had been prosecuted or even threatened with prosecution, no "live controversy" actually existed. For that reason, Georgia argued, the plaintiffs had no legal grounds to bring suit. The state further argued that the court should refrain from exercising its jurisdiction because of the claim that the law was ambiguous. Because of that claim, Georgia contended the Georgia Supreme Court should have the opportunity to issue an interpretative ruling in order to clarify the law.

Conversely, in their motion for the court to issue a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Georgia statute, the ACLU focused arguments in two directions. As written, the broad and nonspecific language of the act would impose unconstitutional restrictions on the content of speech. First, the language of the law prohibited any communications using names that would "falsely identify" a user. The ACLU contended such a restriction would prevent the widespread and common practice over the Internet of using anonymous names or pseudonyms in discussion groups, email, and the publishing of Internet documents. Secondly, the ACLU argued that the act prohibited communications using trade names, logos, and other images without permission. They maintained such a restriction effectively precluded the use of hyperlinks between web pages, the primary means by which Internet users easily navigate the World Wide Web and access information from Internet sites.