Urofsky v. Gilmore

A Virginia statute barred state employees from accessing sexually explicit material on state computers without agency authorization; six professors (plaintiffs) at Virginia public universities sued the Commonwealth (defendant), joined by the ACLU, alleging the law violated their First Amendment academic-freedom rights by preventing research and teaching involving sexual subject matter -- one declined to assign an online indecency-law research project, and another said he could not research sexually explicit Victorian poetry. The district court ruled for the professors, a Fourth Circuit panel reversed, and the full court granted rehearing en banc.