Today the Supreme Court agreed to hear a constitutional challenge to a provision of the 2003 PROTECT Act that prohibits presenting or promoting material designed to create the belief that the material is child pornography. The PROTECT Act added this provision in response to the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition; that decision had invalidated a broader version of the crime on First Amendment grounds. The Eleventh Circuit struck down the 2003 provision on the ground that it was too close to the law struck down in Free Speech Coalition. The cert petition and lower court opinion are here, via SCOTUSblog. For what it’s worth, I don’t think this particular cert grant is an indicator of the merits: the Supreme Court usually grants review when a court of appeals has struck down a federal statute.