In a unanimous decision, the North Carolina Supreme Court has struck down a state law that restricts registered sex offenders from using social media websites.

Justice Kennedy said that the law restricts lawful speech in violation of the First Amendment.

“A fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that all persons have access to places where they can speak and listen, and then, after reflection, speak and listen once more,” Justice Anthony Kennedy writes in the court’s decision.

The case before the court focused on Lester Gerard Packingham, a registered sex offender, who was convicted in 2010 of violating the North Carolina law that it is unlawful for a sex offender who is registered to access a commercial social networking site where the offender knows that the website permits access to minor children

Packingham on Facebook about beating a traffic ticket. “Man God is Good!” he wrote. “How about I got so much favor they dismissed the ticket before the court even started?”

36-year-old Packingham was designated a sex offender back in 2002 when he pleaded guilty at the age of 21 to have sexual relation with a 13-year-old girl.

He then received a suspended sentence and was registered as a sex offender, a designation that lasts 30 years. He had no further sex offenses after his conviction.

“By prohibiting sex offenders from using those websites, North Carolina with one broad stroke bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge,” Kennedy writes, Justice Anthony said.

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