State set to enforce ban on sex toys
Tuesday, October 02, 2007By CHALLEN STEPHENSTimes Staff Writer [email protected]
Supreme Court won't hear store owner's challenge
Within days, police and deputies in Alabama could begin to arrest merchants who sell sex toys.
Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the challenge of a state ban on sex toy sales by Sherri Williams, effectively ending a nine-year legal battle over the constitutionality of the law.
Williams, who operates Pleasures boutiques in Huntsville and Decatur, said her shops will remain open.
"My stand has always been I'll fight until there is no fight left in me, even if I have to fight it from my jail cell," Williams said by phone Monday from a lingerie trade show in Las Vegas.
"I have decided to file another challenge," said Williams, who said this time she would challenge the state ban on First Amendment grounds rather than on issues of sexual privacy.
Meanwhile, the Alabama attorney general's office will go to federal court to end an injunction that has delayed enforcement of the ban.
"Now it has been settled. Now the injunction has to be dissolved," said Chris Bence, chief of staff for Alabama Attorney General Troy King. "That's just a formality, but it must be done. That will take a couple of days.
"At that point, local district attorneys and local law enforcement will be able to enforce the law."
Madison County District Attorney Tim Morgan said he did not plan to mount a campaign against sex toy retailers but would consider cases supplied by police.
"It's a pretty low priority," said Morgan. "We've got plenty of work to do. We don't need to be going out drumming up business.
"We've got real crimes."
The ban stems from a few lines of the 14-page Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act, passed by the Legislature in 1998. The law includes a prohibition against the distribution or production of "any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs."
Violators face up to a year in jail and a fine of not more than $10,000. Possession is not illegal.
Sen. Tom Butler, D-Madison, who sponsored the bill, had declined to discuss the ban since 1999. But in May he said the original intent of the act was to end nude dancing in rural Madison County, not to target the sale of sex toys.
But the law exempts the sale of the devices for "bona fide medical, scientific, educational, legislative, judicial or law enforcement purposes."
Bence said the law is clear but may be tested over its exemptions.
"I would anticipate there will be future challenges in the courts based on the exemptions," he said.
For example, Williams said she is banned from advertising even those devices she says have a legitimate medical or educational purpose.
"So that's a violation of free speech," said Williams. "You can't advertise something you can legally sell."
Williams said she plans to file a new challenge within 30 days. Her last challenge contended that bans on public displays of obscenity should not restrict the sale of devices intended for private use.
Georgia, Texas, Nebraska, Virginia, Mississippi and Louisiana have similar bans.
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