Friday, March 19, 2010
PROSECUTION FOR FAILURE TO ATTEND AFTERSCHOOL "EDUCATION" CLASSES FOUND TO BE UNCONSTITUTIONAL
Parents of some teenagers who were "sexting" have gotten some relief from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a recent decision. The kids were allegedly involved in sending either "provocative" (bathing suit), semi-nude, or nude photographs of minors on cell phones and had been ordered to take afterschool "education" classes to avoid prosecution for distribution of child pornography. Some of the parents brought suit to enjoin prosecution, the relief was granted, and the prosecutor appealed the ruling. A law professor blog explained the Appellate Court's Decision to uphold the Trial Court's ruling:
Parents of some teenagers who were "sexting" have gotten some relief from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a recent decision. The kids were allegedly involved in sending either "provocative" (bathing suit), semi-nude, or nude photographs of minors on cell phones and had been ordered to take afterschool "education" classes to avoid prosecution for distribution of child pornography. Some of the parents brought suit to enjoin prosecution, the relief was granted, and the prosecutor appealed the ruling. A law professor blog explained the Appellate Court's Decision to uphold the Trial Court's ruling:
Threatening to prosecute the children for refusing to attend the education program interfered with the parents’ parental rights and the children’s rights to be free of compelled speech, because it threatened governmental retaliation for the exercise of constitutional rights. ...At the same time, it’s important to realize the potential breadth of such a holding: It would mean that pretrial diversion programs that seek to substitute rehabilitative education for prosecution, in cases (usually involving first offenses or not very serious offenses) far beyond sexting — for instance, drug crimes, drunk driving, assault, domestic violence, child neglect, traffic law violations, and the like— would be presumptively unconstitutional. Such coerced participation in “the education program[s] would violate [defendants’] First Amendment freedom against compelled speech” just as coerced participation in anti-sexting classes would (probably even as to adults and certainly as to minors).
