High Court Leaves Ala. Sex Toy Ban Intact
Phillip Rawls (AP)

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a challenge to Alabama's ban on the sale of sex toys, ending a nine-year legal battle and sending a warning to store owners to clean off their shelves.

An adult-store owner had asked the justices to throw out the law as an unconstitutional intrusion into the privacy of the bedroom. Sherri Williams said she plans to sue again, this time on free speech grounds.

"My motto has been they are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold, dead hand. I refuse to give up," she said.

Alabama's anti-obscenity law, enacted in 1998, bans the distribution of "any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs for anything of pecuniary value."

The law does not ban the possession of sex toys, and it does not regulate other items, including condoms or virility drugs. Residents may legally buy sex toys out of state for use in Alabama, or they may buy sexual devices in Alabama that have a "bona fide medical" purpose.

Similar laws have been upheld in Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas but struck down in Louisiana, Kansas and Colorado, said Mark Lopez, a former American Civil Liberties Union attorney who worked on the Alabama case until recently.

The Alabama attorney general planned to ask a federal judge to lift an injunction preventing the law from being enforced. Breaking the law carries up to a year in jail and a $10,000 fine for a first offense.

Williams had asked the Supreme Court to review a decision by a U.S. appeals court that found Alabama's law was not affected by a U.S. Supreme Court decision knocking down Texas' sodomy law.

The Texas sodomy law involved private conduct, while the Alabama law regulated commercial activity, the appeals court judges said. Public morality was an insufficient government interest in the Texas case but was sufficient in the Alabama case, they said.

Williams called the Supreme Court's decision not to review the law "further evidence of religion in politics."

She also predicted future court battles over which sexual devices are legal to sell as medical devices.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Reprinted with permission from the October 2, 2007 edition of the Associated Press© 2007 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited.