Washington- The high court announced May 15 it would not review a lower-court ruling that upheld a federal anti-obscenity law against a challenge by an Internet, hard-core pornography business.

In declining to review the obscenity decision, the Supreme Court delivered a victory to foes of the spread of sexually graphic material. In October, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a federal judge’s dismissal of an indictment against Extreme Associates Inc., a Los Angeles-based business. A grand jury had indicted Extreme Associates, which acknowledged its online material is legally obscene, with conspiracy to distribute obscenity and disseminating obscene material through the mail and the Internet.

A three-judge panel of the Third Circuit, which is based in Philadelphia, ruled that Supreme Court precedent supported federal anti-obscenity laws against First Amendment and due process challenges. The federal court erred in ruling the anti-obscenity measures violate privacy rights, the Third Circuit panel said.

“By calling it ‘Extreme,’ they aren’t product-puffing,” said Jan LaRue, Concerned Women for America’s chief counsel, in a written statement. “This is some of the most vile and disgusting porn available anywhere. The fact that this garbage is accessible to kids makes the offense all the more egregious. Thankfully, the courts have rejected this ridiculous challenge to the federal law.”

In dismissing the indictment at Extreme Associates’ request in a western Pennsylvania federal court, judge Gary Lancaster had referenced a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court opinion overturning state prohibitions on homosexual sodomy. The Lawrence v. Texas decision, Lancaster wrote, “can be reasonably interpreted as holding that public morality is not a legitimate state interest sufficient to justify infringing on adult, private, consensual, sexual conduct even if that conduct is deemed offensive to the general public’s sense of morality.”

The Department of Justice urged the Third Circuit to review the January 2005 opinion and overturn it. If Lancaster’s decision was upheld, DOJ said it was concerned the ruling “would undermine not only the federal obscenity laws, but all laws based on shared views of public morality, such as laws against prostitution, bestiality and bigamy.”