In this Note, Ritter discusses the mistake-of-age defense in child pornography cases. While some courts impose a strict liability standard that rejects any mistake defense, others hold that the First Amendment allows offenders to assert a reasonable mistake defense. Underlying these decisions is the tension between the need to protect children from the dangers of child pornography and the conflicting goal of avoiding the chilling effects of overly broad laws. As a compromise between these two conflicting goals, Ritter proposes an intermediate standard that would require defendants claiming a mistake-of-age defense to show that they verified child subjects’ ages with government documents or officials.