A federal court this week dismissed a charge against a Wisconsin man who was arrested for using AI to generate and supply images of children engaged in sexually explicit acts, sparking outrage over the normalization of abuse and explicit images of children.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ three-judge panel ruled that Steven Anderegg, 44, is protected by a Supreme Court precedent recognizing First Amendment safeguards on the private possession of such materials. The appellate court upheld a lower court ruling in February 2025 that dismissed the explicit images possession charge against Anderegg.
In a separate opinion, two out of the three panel judges admitted that the implications of the ruling were disturbing, but they said they were tied to follow Supreme Court precedents.
Judges John Lee and Joshua Kolar wrote in their concurrence:
“We now live in an age where GenAI models can render images depicting the abuse of virtual children that are virtually indistinguishable from those depicting the abuse of actual children. … Given the relentless advancement in artificial intelligence models, we have some concerns about the lines these cases draw, but we are not free to redraw them ourselves.”
The Justice Department investigated Anderegg in late 2023 when Meta reported a case in which an Instagram user had sent an AI-generated child sexual-abuse image to a minor. Reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Anderegg was charged with creating and possessing the content and for sending the content to a 15-year-old boy.
The federal district court ruled that Anderegg could not be prosecuted for privately owned images, as that would violate the First Amendment. The Justice Department appealed to the 7th Circuit, which ultimately ruled in favor of the dismissal.
Although Anderegg will not be prosecuted for owning the images, Anderegg could face prosecution for creating and distributing the images and for sending porn to a minor. Those charges remain pending.
The appellate court cited two Supreme Court rulings, one being Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. In this ruling, the court struck down a federal law banning any material that “appears to be” explicit child abuse imager.
The Supreme Court ruling in Stanley v. Georgia was also cited. A U.S. citizen, under the ruling, could own obscene materials in the privacy of their home.
“We hold the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit making mere private possession of obscene material a crime,” the justices said.
“As we have said, the State retains broad power to regulate obscenity; that power simply does not extend to mere possession by the individual in the privacy of his own home.”
AI child sexual abuse imagery has spiked in recent years, according to reports. Child sexual abuse videos investigations from just 13 in 2024 to 3,440 in 2025. The United Nations Children’s Fund discovered that across 11 countries, at least 1.2 million children had been victimized by predators altering their photos into obscene deepfakes within one year. As AI images increasingly becomes more accessible and realistic, so does depicting such images at a larger scale.
At least one police chief in Florida thinks the three-judge panel’s decision is a dangerous miscalculation.
“The courts in this case got it wrong,” said Pensacola Police Chief Eric Winstrom in an interview with his local ABC television affiliate. “I realized that this is an emerging level of technology. You know, everything changes but the courts have to keep up. And in this case, they failed.
“Just because technology is moving at such a fast pace doesn’t mean that the courts don’t have that responsibility to have to move equally fast to keep up with it.”
Relevant Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7, Matthew 18:6, Isaiah 5:20
