Legal News

Federal Judge Issues TRO in Teenagers? Child Porn Case

By Dionne Searcey

One Pennsylvania prosecutor seeking to throw cold water on the practice of sexting, when teenagers send text messages of nude or partially nude photos of themselves to their buddies, has suffered a bit of a setback. Yesterday a judge blocked him from filing pornography charges for now against a few of the girls who appeared in the images. See the Reuters story here.

Photos of the girls were found on cell phones confiscated by school officials in Tunkhannock, a small town in the eastern part of the state. Two of the girls were depicted from the waist up in opaque bras; one girl was wrapped in a towel with her breasts exposed. (See previous LB coverage.)

Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick had told the girls he would file charges against them unless they completed classes teaching them "what it means to be a girl in today's society." The girls refused but other students in their school have already completed the classes. Skumanick joins a cadre of prosecutors across the nation in filing child pornography charges but usually against the teens who are on the receiving end of the photos.

The ACLU sued Skumanick, saying the photos are not in violation of any obscenity laws and are protected under the First Amendment. Last week the group asked the judge for a temporary restraining order to keep Skumanick from filing charges. Skumanick had argued the court has no business interfering with his right to bring charges against anyone. Yesterday, federal judge James M. Munley in Scranton disagreed saying "the danger of irreparable harm is clear and imminent." See the ruling here.)

In his ruling the judge said he found that the plaintiffs "are reasonably likely to succeed on the merits on this issue." He set a hearing for June 2.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 31, 2009 (boomark / email).