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Is Powell?s Bookstore a criminal pornographer? 9th Circuit panel says no

By Alliance Alert

Julie Hilden writing at FindLaw: "On September 20, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that two Oregon statutes that had criminalized giving sexually-explicit material to minors violated the First Amendment. In theory, these statutes were intended to target the reprehensible practices of 'luring' and 'grooming,' by which adults expose minors to sexually-explicit material as part of their attempt to have sex with the minors. And of course, no party to the case has contested the point that an adult's having sex with -- or attempting to have sex with -- a minor is wrong and should be illegal. However, the Oregon statutes at issue did not criminalize the combination of luring or grooming and sex with a minor, whether achieved or attempted. Instead, the statutes allowed prosecutions to occur when no sex by an adult with a minor had occurred, had been attempted, or had been intended."

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on September 27, 2010 (boomark / email).