Posted on 10/27/2002 8:11:09 AM PST by Viva Le Dissention
In a case hailed as a landmark victory for privacy rights, a federal court has sided with plaintiffs challenging an Alabama law prohibiting the sale of sexual devices.
In 1998, the Alabama Legislature amended its state obscenity law to make it unlawful to sell "any obscene material or any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs."
Plaintiffs who challenged the law in federal court include several people who use sexual devices and two women who own businesses that sell sex toys, Sherri Williams and B.J. Bailey. They argued that the ban violated their constitutional right to privacy under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and 14th Amendments.
"The law was absolute nonsense. We challenged this law basically because it would put us out of business," says Dan Bailey, B.J. Bailey’s husband and part-owner of her business, Saucy Ladies. "The right to privacy in the bedroom is sacred."
In March 1999, U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith ruled that the Alabama law was "overly broad," noting that people who used the devices would be "denied therapy for, among other things, sexual dysfunction."
However, in October 2000, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta reversed, finding the law constitutional. "However misguided the legislature of Alabama may have been in enacting the statute challenged in this case, the statute is not constitutionally irrational under rational basis scrutiny because it is rationally related to the state’s legitimate power to protect its view of public morality," the panel wrote.
The appeals court remanded the case to the district court to determine whether the law violated the as-applied challenges, or rights, of the specific plaintiffs.
On remand, Judge Smith ruled for the plaintiffs, finding a fundamental right to sexual privacy as applied to consensual, adult relationships. "Plaintiffs’ undisputed evidence has shown that there is a historical practice and contemporary trend of legislative and societal liberalization of attitudes toward consensual, adult sexual activity, and, a concomitant avoidance of prosecutions against married and unmarried persons for violations of statutes that proscribe consensual sexual activity," he wrote. Williams v. Pryor, No. CV-98-S-1938-NE (Oct. 10).
Amy Herring, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, applauded the court’s decision. "The lasting significance of this case is that it extends the right of privacy into the larger realm of sexual privacy, which is no longer limited to reproductive rights and contraception."
Mark Lopez, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and another plaintiffs’ counsel, agreed. "This is the first case since the reproductive freedom cases in 1973 to broaden the constitutional right to privacy to cover private sexual affairs between consenting adults."
"The court of appeals had set a very high bar for us," Lopez explained. "They instructed us on remand to establish as a matter of historical fact a pattern of state noninterference with private sexual affairs of married persons and nonmarried persons to a lesser extent," he said. "We accomplished this and achieved a victory for privacy."
Richard Allen, chief deputy attorney general of Alabama, said the state had not decided whether to appeal again to the 11th Circuit. "We will decide in a few days," he said. "We don’t like to lose."
PS - B.J. Bailey? You can't make this stuff up...
Posted on 10/11/02.
Alabama ban on sex toys is struck down as unconstitutional
There are quite a few.... interesting ..... posts.
THere is indeed a limit to freedoms of expressions and consumptions. THat is why one cannot manufacture fake currency nor consume drugs. THis Supreme court is also medling with states rights big time there. THere is no coercion involved in the Alabama law as there was for slavery. Where is this country heading? Is the sex business that important? Gees.
Ah hurd that them folks uses they mouffs fer sekshul activities...
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