From Bierly v. Dep't of Defense, decided Wednesday by Judge Royce Lamberth (D.D.C.):
In 2020, Bierly was offered employment with the Air Force Joint Warfare Analysis Center in Dahlgren, Virginia as a Student Trainee. As a condition of his employment, Bierly was required to maintain a Top Secret with Special Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance, for which he was polygraphed by NSA investigators in February 2020. Starting in June 2020, Bierly began working for the Air Force in a probationary capacity….
In November 2022, the DCSA notified Bierly of its intent to revoke his security clearance pursuant to Security Executive Agent Directive (SEAD) 4, Guideline D, which provides for revocation on the basis of the subject's sexual behavior. DCSA's notification included a Statement of Reasons (SOR) document, explaining the agency's rationale for its preliminary revocation determination. The SOR indicated that, during his polygraph, Bierly admitted to viewing pornographic videos featuring "furries," which may refer either to real people wearing animal costumes or to animated images of anthropomorphic animals.
Bierly confessed that some of the furries in the videos he watched were depicted as minors as young as age 16. The SOR advised that Bierly's history of "engaging in criminal sexual behavior by viewing and masturbating to pornographic images of minors" and intent to continue doing so constituted a "security concern." For his part, Bierly objects to characterizing the videos as child pornography because they featured animated characters rather than actual 16-year-old people….
Bierly's constitutional claims are as follows: Count I claims that viewing animated furry pornography is protected speech under the First Amendment, and that DCSA's suspension of his security clearance therefore infringes this right.
