WASHINGTON (AP) - The government has lost its final attempt to revive a federal law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet.

The Supreme Court, in an order Wednesday, said it won't consider reviving the Child Online Protection Act, which lower federal courts struck down as unconstitutional. The law has been embroiled in court challenges since it passed in 1998 and never took effect.

The law would have barred Web sites from making harmful content available to minors over the Internet.

A federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled that that would violate the First Amendment, because filtering technologies and other parental control tools are a less restrictive way to protect children from inappropriate content online.