Justices in the Michigan Supreme Court refused to review a court ruling that declared nudity on a public access cable program was illegal, according to Broadcasting & Cable magazine.
The case let stand a ruling by a Michigan lower court against Timothy Bruce Huffman, who was arrested after a three minute segment aired on a public access channel showing a joke-telling penis with a face painted on it.
Huffman’s lawyer Steven Savickas said a Washington D.C. law firm may to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court pro-bono.
But Steve Shapiro, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said he was unsure whether the high court would hear the case, saying that there needs to be evidence that a television indecency problem is widespread and not just in Michigan.
Last May, a Michigan court of appeals found that Michigan’s indecency statute also applies to television, and is thus applicable to Huffman’s talking penis on cable access. That court concluded that such nudity on television “can be more offensive than more traditional public exposure.”
The court went on to say that “the incidental restriction on defendant’s First Amendment freedom is not greater than is essential to the furtherance of the governmental interest in promoting public morality by prohibiting public nudity.”
First Amendment Robert Corn-Revere said the ruling is not likely to impact cases outside Michigan.
“This case is an aberration and is directly at odds with established Supreme Court precedent,” he told the magazine.
Ten years ago, Corn-Revere led Playboy’s successful challenge of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which required cable operators to scramble adult programming during the hours that children are likely to view it.
