Publishers Fight Oregon Censorship Statute

By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 4/29/2008 7:40:00 AM

The Association of American Publishers is fighting censorship in Oregon. Yesterday it joined with six Oregon booksellers and the ACLU of Oregon to challenge a new Oregon law that criminalizes the dissemination of sexually explicit material to anyone under age 13, or the dissemination to anyone under age 18 of any material with the intent to sexually arouse the recipient or the provider. The new statute, which makes no provision for judging the material as a whole, nor for considering its serious literary, artistic or scientific value, went into effect January 1. 

The lawsuit, filed April 25 in federal district court in Portland, seeks an injunction barring enforcement of the statute. The suit calls the statute “unconstitutionally vague” and “overbroad,” and says it “burdens the exercise of free expression and creates a chilling effect on the sale, display, and dissemination of constitutionally protected speech.” The Oregon ACLU said that among those who could be prosecuted are a 17-year-old girl who lends her 13-year-old-sister a copy of Judy Blume’s Forever, or a mother who gives her child a copy of Robie Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health. The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, one of the plaintiffs in the case, sees enforcement of the statute as a “logistical nightmare” for Oregon booksellers.

“While the statute may have been a well-intentioned effort by the Oregon legislature to target sexual predators, it is so broadly written that it threatens all kinds of constitutionally protected speech,” said AAP president and CEO Pat Schroeder.

Other plaintiffs in the case include the Freedom to Read Foundation, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Powell’s Books, Annie Bloom’s Books, Planned Parenthood of the Columbia/Willamette; and the Cascade AIDS Project.