Attorneys for the XMart Adult Supercenter here have vowed to fight charges stemming from a police raid Tuesday where 20,000 DVDs were seized for failure to display official ratings on their packaging.
“We have numerous reasons to believe that this action was unconstitutional,” said Jamie Benjamin, an attorney for the company and who also serves as national chairman for the First Amendment Lawyers Association.
Under a 1988 Florida law, “it is unlawful for a person to sell at retail, rent to another, attempt to sell at retail, or attempt to rent to another, a video movie in this state unless the official rating or the motion picture from which it is copied is clearly displayed on the outside of its cassette, case, jacket, or other covering.”
The statute also states that those movies which carry no official rating must be marked "NR" or "Not Rated."
Benjamin said the obscure law was meant to target video stores carrying mainstream movies and not adult video stores.
“It’s for every mom and pop video store or chain video store that has ratings on its movies so that parents can tell what it is,” Benjamin said.
“But in adult, when you have a sign that says no one under 18 admitted and says that if sexual content offends you don’t come in, then (using this law) is absurd.”
Benjamin said he has yet to find an instance in which the law or similar laws were applied to adult video stores in Florida or elsewhere.
“Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland and West Virginia have similar laws, but I have never seen them applied to adult stores,” he said.
Sumter County Sheriff’s Capt. Gary Brannen told the Ocala, Fla., Star-Banner newspaper that nearly all the movies seized had no rating displayed, leaving some to determine for themselves the videos’ contents.
Brannen said that he understood that XMart patrons are aware of the X-rated nature of the movies, but he said he feared the movies could end up in the hands of children.
Benjamin, however, said authorities are simply trying to close down the nine-month-old business.
“The sheriff in the community has made it no secret that he wants to close down the store,” he said.
XMart is already facing charges for allegedly selling obscene materials to undercover officers last year. That case is under appeal, Benjamin said.
“The industry needs to be alerted that this occurred in Florida for the first time and that once the rest of law enforcement gets wind of this, there’s a potential for enforcement will take place in other areas with that same law,” he said.
