BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - A federal appeals
court Wednesday upheld a 1998 Alabama law banning the sale of sex toys
in the state, ruling the Constitution doesn't include a right to sexual
privacy. In a 2-1 decision overturning a lower court, a
three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the
state has a right to police the sale of devices that can be sexually
stimulating.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which
represented merchants and users who sued to overturn the law, asked the
appeals court to rule that the Constitution included a right to sexual
privacy that the ban on sex toy sales would violate. The court
declined, indicating such a decision could lead down other paths.
"If the people of Alabama in time decide that a prohibition on sex toys
is misguided, or ineffective, or just plain silly, they can repeal the
law and be finished with the matter," the court said.
"On the
other hand, if we today craft a new fundamental right by which to
invalidate the law, we would be bound to give that right full force and
effect in all future cases including, for example, those involving
adult incest, prostitution, obscenity, and the like."
Attorney General Troy King said the court "has done its duty" in upholding the law.
Sherri Williams, an adult novelty retailer who filed the lawsuit with
seven other women and two men, called the decision "depressing."
"I'm just very disappointed that courts feel Alabamians don't have the
right to purchase adult toys. It's just ludicrous," said Williams, who
lives in Florida and owns Pleasures stores in Huntsville and Decatur.
"I intend to pursue this."
U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith
Jr. of Huntsville has twice ruled against the state law, deciding in
2002 that the sex toy ban violated the constitutional right to privacy.
The state appealed both times and won.
The state law bans only
the sale of sex toys, not their possession, the court said, and it
doesn't regulate other items including condoms or virility drugs. "The
Alabama statute proscribes a relatively narrow bandwidth of activity,"
U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr. wrote.
Circuit Judge
Rosemary Barkett disagreed, saying the decision was based on the
"erroneous foundation" that adults don't have a right to consensual
sexual intimacy and that private acts can be made a crime in the name
of promoting "public morality."
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
