Prudish Indiana - Lixensing Fee for Sexually Explicit Materials

Indiana's General Assembly stuck their collective foot in it - such is my opinion.

From The Indianapolis Star's ACLU, booksellers sue over registration:

The Indianapolis Museum of Art, which sells art books containing images of nudes painted by the Old Masters, joined a civil rights group today in suing over a law that would require business selling pornography to register with the state.

Maxwell L. Anderson, director and chief executive of the IMA, said he is concerned about the law’s effect on the museum and the broader message it sends.

“Our role in this community is to foster tolerance for creativity, and this law is completely in opposition to that mission,” Anderson said.

He added that the law “is not a signal of a progressive place.”

Here is a description of the statute and the suit:

The suit’s target is House Enrolled Act 1042, approved this year by the General Assembly. It requires businesses that sell such material to pay a $250 fee and register with the secretary of state. The suit says the law also appears to require employees of the businesses to register and pay the fee.

Ken Falk, legal director for the ACLU of Indiana, said the law is vague, overly broad and violates the First Amendment.

The Indiana Daily Lawyer's Suit challenges new sexually explicit retailer law has a very interesting detail:

The suit claims the statue contains no guidance as to what types of materials must be registered with the Secretary of State and will lead to self-censorship in order to avoid the state's registration requirements.

Okay, Falk has to file in the federal court to bring the case under 42 U.S.C 1983 which allows for attorney fees if they win. To bring it under the federal statute, there had to be a violation of federal rights. That our state legislators might not know that a statute violates Hoosier's federal rights is bad but I think ignoring our state constitutional rights may be even worse.

"Our state constitutional rights"? Yes, we have 37 of them. Some that do not appear in the United States Constitution and some that do but are different from our federal rights. For instance, Article I, Section 9 reads differently from the federal First Amendment speech rights and is also a bit broader:

No law shall be passed, restraining the free interchange of thought and opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print,

The ICLU may not have included this in their lawsuit but this does not mean we cannot question our legislators' protection of our constitutional rights and how they view their obligations to uphold both the state and federal constitutions.

Instead, we have businesses paying money to fight the statute rather than employing Hoosiers and our taxpayers doubly wasted - first for paying legislators to write and pass the statute and then for defending the lawsuit.