The Supreme Court Monday refused to hear a case that challenges a Texas law that makes it a crime to promote sex toys shaped like sex organs.
The case stems from a lawsuit filed by an adult bookstore employee against the state after he was arrested by undercover officers for showing a penis-shaped device to a female undercover officer and telling her it would provide her with sexual gratification, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Ignacio Sergio Acosta says in his lawsuit that a Texas law that prohibits the manufacture, marketing or distribution of sex toys shaped like sex organs is unconstitutional because it prevents people from using the devices and it violates their sexual privacy rights.
Acosta’s lawyer said Colorado, Kansas and Louisiana have held that such laws were unconstitutional, but that Georgia, Mississippi and Texas have upheld them.
Acosta’s motion to dismiss the criminal case against him was granted by an El Paso County court, but an appeals court reinstated it, citing that Texas law didn’t infringe on an individual’s right to sexual privacy.
The Eighth District Court of Appeals in Texas has ruled that the bar against promoting such sex toys does not infringe on an individual’s right to use obscene devices at home.
But Acosta said that the law should be reviewed since the Supreme Court has struck down a Texas law that banned gay sex as illegal invasion of privacy.
