Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday blocked legislation in the Senate that would have strengthened penalties for child porn possession, saying the bill “doesn’t reflect the realities of today.”
The legislation—put forward by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and cosponsored by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Rick Scott (R-Fla.)—comes after weeks of heated debate over Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s track record in sentencing child porn offenders.
After one such debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Durbin, who chairs the committee, said that the Senate had been derelict in its duty to update child porn law, which was originally designed to deal with physical images rather than digital ones.
“I hope you will agree we all want to do everything within our power to lessen incidents of child pornography and exploitation,” Durbin said last week. “I want to tell you, Congress doesn’t have clean hands. We haven’t touched this now for 15, 16, or 17 years.”
Durbin added that Congress had shown “inattention and unwillingness to tackle an extremely controversial issue.”
“I don’t know if you’ve introduced a bill to change this—I'll be looking for it,” Durbin told Hawley. “If we’re going to tackle it, we should.”
Referencing that interaction, Hawley said on the Senate floor Tuesday: “I agree 100 percent. I agree we should tackle it, this is the time to tackle it, and I’m here to do that today.”
In 2003, Congress passed legislation instituting mandatory minimum sentencing for child porn offenders. In a controversial decision, the Supreme Court in United States v. Booker struck down the mandatory minimum laws, which bind judges’ hands, as unconstitutional.
Hawley’s bill would reinstate those mandatory minimums, requiring that those convicted of child porn possession receive at least five years in federal prison.
“Restore the law back to what Congress intended back in 2003,” Hawley said.
Despite his calls last week for Congress to consider the issue legislatively, Durbin on Tuesday blocked Hawley’s bill.
“I have to ask myself—why now?” Durbin said in his objection.
Reporting comments allegedly made by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, on which Judge Jackson served for several years, Durbin said “these guidelines [imposed by the 2003 legislation] don’t reflect the reality of today.”
Durbin added, “The laws were written in an era where the materials we’re talking about were physical materials and we now live in a world of internet and access to ... tens of thousands of images if that is your decision.”
“There are some political groups—at least one well-known political group—that manufactures theories about child pornography and pedophilia and the like, and even inspires deadly reactions to them, and they’re cheering this on,” Durbin said in an oblique reference to QAnon, an online group that says that high-level government and Hollywood officials are involved in a major sex-trafficking ring.
Following the exchange, Hawley took to Twitter to criticize Durbin’s response to the legislation.
Since then, it has been a key issue for Republicans, many of whom have highlighted the controversy to show that Jackson is “soft on crime.”
