First Amendment defense claims could threaten ‘revenge pornography’ statutes

Matthew Rychlik was not most people’s idea of a good fiance. But the state of Illinois thought his future wife Bethany Austin’s breakup message went too far.
After Austin found nude selfies of another woman among Rychlik’s text messages—which both Rychlik and the other woman knew were going to Austin’s iPad—she tried to work out the relationship with him. But when he told friends and family that they broke up because Austin was “crazy” and didn’t cook or clean, she got mad. She sent out a letter with her take on the breakup—and included the pictures.
That put Austin in violation of the Illinois “revenge pornography” statute, which criminalizes dissemination of private nude or sexual images without the subject’s consent. But at trial in McHenry County, a semi-rural area in northeast Illinois, Austin argued that the law was an unconstitutional restriction on her freedom of speech. The trial court agreed, holding that the law doesn’t serve a compelling government interest because the harms of revenge porn are speculative.
As a result, the state of Illinois went before its state supreme court last May, defending the statute at oral argument. Around the same time, Jordan Bartlett Jones, was making a similar First Amendment argument in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Appeals courts in Wisconsin and Vermont rejected First Amendment challenges to revenge porn statutes in 2018—but in Texas and Illinois, the lower courts have given the First Amendment claims a foothold.
Decisions striking down those laws could threaten revenge porn laws in all 46 states (plus Washington, D.C., and Guam) that have them. But Mary Anne Franks, president, legislative and tech policy director of the anti-revenge-porn group, the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, says that could be for the best.
“Sometimes these challenges are legitimate, in the sense that it may be good for the legislature to take a pretty hard look at whether or not they’ve crafted the best law possible,” says Franks, who teaches criminal and First Amendment law at the University of Miami.

First Amendment defense claims could threaten ‘revenge pornography’ statutes Shutterstock_hooded_person_on_computer

First Amendment defense claims could threaten ‘revenge pornography’ statutes Shutterstock_hooded_person_on_computer

http://www.abajournal.com/web/article/first-amendment-defense-claims-could-threaten-revenge-pornography-statutes
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Anarcho-Capitalist, AnCaps Forum, Ancapolis, OZschwitz Contraband
“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner
"Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann

First Amendment defense claims could threaten ‘revenge pornography’ statutes

First Amendment defense claims could threaten ‘revenge pornography’ statutes

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Via AnCaps: Law & Enforced Unnatural Order