The Virginia Supreme Court declared the state's anti-spam law unconstitutional because of its violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, in particular anonymous speech. This matter was brought up in the case of Jeremy Jaynes, a longtime spammer convicted in 2004 and sentenced to nine years in prison for sending millions of unsolicited e-mail messages a day from his home in North Carolina. He was the first person to be convicted of sending illegal spam in the U.S.

Virginia's anti-spam law makes it a misdemeanor to send unsolicited bulk e-mail by using false transmission information, such as a phony domain name or Internet protocol address. Jaynes argued that the law violates the free-speech protections of the First Amendment because it does not just restrict commercial e-mails — it restricts other unsolicited messages as well, including those containing political or religious speech.

Jeremy Jaynes, estimated to be the world's 8th most prolific spammer, is believed to have received up to $750,000 a month from his efforts. At the time of his arrest in 2005, prosecutors estimated that he had raked in up to $24 million in sales, some of which he invested in a restaurant and a chain of gyms. When police originally searched his home, they found more than 176 million full e-mail addresses and 1.3 billion e-mail usernames.

While Jaynes’ conviction was reversed, some say that the man known as “Gaven Stubberfield” still belongs in prison and that the long arm of the law was twisted in this matter on the account of alleged Constitution violation.

Attorney General Bob McDonnell is planning on taking the matter to the next level, the U.S. Supreme Court as he thinks that "Jeremy Jaynes used the private property of Internet service providers to defraud individuals worldwide. This was not a matter of free speech, it was fraud. Virginia acted appropriately to use this new law to put an end to this criminal behavior."