Anderegg Case: Seventh Circuit Upholds Dismissal of Part of Indictment

The Anderegg case was addressed in a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which on August 25, 2026, upheld the dismissal of one part of the indictment. The three-judge panel ruled that 18 U.S.C. § 1466A(b)(1) is unconstitutional under the specific circumstances of the case if applied to the mere private possession of obscene sexual depictions in the home.

However, the ruling is not a general declaration that AI-generated sexual material depicting minors is lawful or constitutionally protected in the United States. The court expressly limited its scope to possession of material that, according to the government’s admission, did not depict a real child and could not be linked to a real child.

What the Anderegg case concerns

United States v. Anderegg involved, among other things, a charge under § 1466A(b)(1), which criminalizes possession of certain obscene visual depictions of minors. The lower court dismissed this part of the indictment, and the appeals court upheld its action.

The panel proceeded from the fact that the disputed images did not depict a real child. It relied on U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Stanley v. Georgia and Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. According to the appeals court, it is bound by these precedents as a lower federal court.

The first concerns protection for the private possession of obscene material in the home. The second limited the ability to punish virtual depictions that do not portray real children. This combination of legal principles was central to the outcome.

Other counts of the indictment remain unaffected

The decision does not concern the entire indictment. The court stated that charges related to the production, distribution and transmission of material to a person younger than 16 remained unaffected. The ruling therefore addresses only the narrowly defined question of private possession.

The description of prosecutors’ allegations about the specific creation and sending of the images in the decision does not constitute a final finding that these acts occurred. These are allegations stated in the indictment; the other counts of the indictment were unaffected by the decision.

AI complicates the line between virtual and real material

In a concurring opinion, Judge John Lee noted that generative AI complicates the distinction between virtual material and depictions of real children. He suggested that this area may require further guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is important in part because the older precedents arose before today’s photorealistic image generators. In Anderegg, however, the court did not rule on the general regulation of generative AI, but on the application of a specific provision to a specific type of material possession.

The Anderegg case thus represents a significant but precisely limited ruling for the U.S. debate over synthetic child sexual abuse material. According to the ruling, federal law encounters a constitutional limit in this situation; the decision does not apply to material linked to real victims or to production or dissemination.

What to watch next

• It has not been confirmed whether the U.S. Department of Justice will seek review by the full Seventh Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court.
• It will be important to see whether other appeals courts interpret similar federal provisions in the same way.
• An open question remains whether Congress or the Supreme Court will respond to AI images that may be indistinguishable from depictions of real children.

Verified and updated: 08/30/2026 15:38