A Sacramento Superior Court Judge has ruled that a Folsom, California ordinance restricting the sale of sex toys does not violate a business owner's First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
Jim Downing wrote in The Sacramento Bee that the challenge to the ordinance was brought by Sam and Misty Dufour, owners of Ms. Teaz, a lingerie shop in Folsom’s Historic District.
A November, 2004, emergency ordinance, the story continued, was passed by the city shortly before Ms. Teaz opened its doors, transparently targeting the store. The ordinance, which prohibited the sale of explicit items such as bondage paraphernalia, as well as requiring blinders on displays of adult magazines, was made permanent in January 2005. Although the city never actually cited the store, Downing wrote, the owners brought suit because they felt harassed by the license approval process.
The report continued by saying that Dufour's attorney, Greg Garrison, argued that the city's ordinance was vague and contradictory. For example, said Garrison, the ordinance prohibits "devices with non-sex-related utility being marketed ... in a manner promoting sexual or sadomasochistic uses."
Garrison said that language unfairly allows Target or Wal-Mart, for instance, to sell toy handcuffs, while similar handcuffs could not be sold at Ms. Teaz, because, in that context, they would be marketed for their "sexual utility."
However, Judge Connelly rejected that line of reasoning, said the report. A marketing restriction can't be "bootstrapped" into a free-speech issue,” he said.
"If you follow that to its logical conclusion, then every product would fall under the First Amendment,” Connelly told The Sacramento Bee.
