District Judge Dismisses Constitutional Challenge to Federal Obscenity Law

As reported by Blog of the Legal Times, yesterday Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied pornography producer John Stagliano’s motion to dismiss the federal indictment charging him and his company, Evil Angel Productions, with selling and transporting obscene material across state lines.  The producer’s constitutional challenge had three principal elements: that "contemporary community standards" provided too vague a standard by which to judge whether Internet speech was obscene, that Lawrence v. Texas established a right to sexual privacy that would protect the ownership and sale of sexually explicit films, and that using D.C. as a venue for an obscenity prosecution would chill of pornography companies from pursuing copyrights and establish D.C. juries as the effective "final arbiters" of obscenity standards. Despite rejecting the motion, Judge Leon did state that he would consider allowing Stagliano to pursue an immediate appeal to the D.C. Circuit. 

JFB