A case stemming from an innocent 2010 Facebook post about a victory in traffic court has made its way to the Supreme Court because it involves a convicted sex offender and a North Carolina law banning all sex offenders from using social media where children might be present. As the Associated Press reports, Lester Packingham Jr. had been using Facebook under an alias since the passage of the law in 2008 — now 36, he served 10 months in jail for "indecent liberties with a minor" when he was 21.

Somehow local law enforcement caught on to Packingham's Facebook use and charged him for violating the law, and his conviction was then reversed in the state's appeals court. But the North Carolina Supreme Court then upheld his conviction, though with a divided decision, largely due to the vagaries of the statute itself and how broadly it could be interpreted. Now it's up to SCOTUS to settle the matter when they hear oral arguments today.

As the Cato Institute, which filed an amicus brief in the case alongside the ACLU, explains:

The North Carolina law bans access not just to what people consider to social-media sites, but also any sites that enable some form of connection between visitors, which would include YouTube, Wikipedia, and even the New York Times. The statute is also vague, in that it covers websites that “permit” minor children to create profiles or pages — and you can’t even find out what a website “permits” without first looking at its terms of service — itself a violation of the statute. Even if the site purports to stop minors from accessing its content, it’s impossible for someone to know whether and how that contractual provision is enforced in practice. Someone subject to this law literally can’t know what he can’t do or say; the police themselves aren’t sure! The statute also fails constitutional scrutiny because it criminalizes speech based on the identity of the speaker.

Furthermore, says Stanford law professor David Goldberg, who's representing Packingham at the Supreme Court, "Everyday Americans understand that social media — which includes Twitter, Facebook, Instagram — are absolutely central to their daily life and how the First Amendment is exercised in America today."

There's been no evidence to suggest that Packingham used social media to contact any minors, and says Goldberg to the AP, "There's never been any suggestion that he was up to anything but exercising his freedom of speech."

North Carolina isn't alone in having laws governing social media use by sex offenders. Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana have similar laws, but Louisiana has had to amend its law to comply with a court decision. As the AP explains, Nebraska and Indiana have had their similar laws already ruled unconstitutional.

Supporters of such laws say they aren't violating sex offenders' free speech, merely the place and manner of their speech, but the trouble arises in laws that are written so broadly as to encompass the entire internet — and perhaps in 2008 it was not clear that virtually every website was going to have a social media component within a few years.

Stay tuned as the justices mull this one.

Update: Per the Associated Press, five of the eight sitting justices signaled during oral arguments Monday that they were leaning toward striking down the North Carolina law, with Justice Ginsberg saying, "The law does not operate in some sleepy First Amendment quarter. [Instead it] forbids speech on the very platforms on which Americans today are most likely to communicate, to organize for social change, and to petition their government."

Previously: Facebook Marketplace Already A Silk Road-Style S**tshow, Shortly After Launch