United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, 529 U.S. 803 (2000), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court struck down Section 505 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which required that cable television operators completely scramble or block channels that are "primarily dedicated to sexually-oriented programming" or limit their transmission to the hours of 10 pm to 6 am.

[1] In order to shield children from hearing or seeing images resulting from signal bleed, the U.S. Congress enacted Section 505 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 based on a handful of complaints.

A group of sexologists filed an amicus brief on behalf of Playboy arguing that there was no state interest in shielding minors from sexually explicit signal bleed.

The brief's authors included Elizabeth Rice Allgeier, Vern L. Bullough, Milton Diamond, Harold I. Lief, John Money, and Ira L.

However, the Court held that Section 504, combined with “market-based solutions such as programmable televisions, VCR's, and mapping systems” can eliminate signal bleed without restricting a cable operator's ability to transmit its programming to those who want to receive it.

[8] The Court concluded that because of the existence of such alternatives, which could be equally effective at furthering the Government's interest, the overly restrictive Section 505 violated the First Amendment.