Opinion ID: 1893603
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the right of privacy issue

Text: As we have noted, the record contains no information as to the specific conduct of the appellees beyond the fact that each was charged with soliciting for prostitution. Notwithstanding that fact, the trial court concluded that § 22-2701 is invalid as an unconstitutional invasion of defendants' rights of privacy . . . . Such a conclusion was predicated upon arguments concerning women's right to the use of their own bodies. It would, of course, be absurd to suggest that a woman who elects (or is induced) to occupy herself as a prostitute thereby forfeits her constitutional rights, including those of privacy. However, there is no basis for concluding that any such issue validly is presented in this case. We are not confronted here with any adult's private, consensual sexual conduct. Appellees were arrested upon allegedly making solicitations of police officers for prostitution, with the solicitations presumably having been made in some public place. Whatever might have happened had appellees succeeded in their solicitations and engaged elsewhere in some private sexual act for a price is irrelevant. See United States v. Carson, supra, 319 A.2d at 331. In Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 93 S.Ct. 2628, 37 L.Ed.2d 446 (1973), the Supreme Court stated (at 65-66, 93 S.Ct. at 2639-2640): Our prior decisions recognizing a right to privacy guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment included only personal rights that can be deemed `fundamental' or `implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.' This privacy right encompasses and protects the personal intimacies of the home, the family, marriage, motherhood, procreation, and child rearing. Nothing, however, in this Court's decisions intimates that there is any fundamental privacy right implicit in the concept of ordered liberty to watch obscene movies in places of public accommodation. [Citations omitted; cf. Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 89 S. Ct. 1243, 22 L.Ed.2d 542 (1969).] We conclude that the trial court erred in deciding that the statute proscribing soliciting for prostitution is unconstitutional for its allegedly impermissible infringement of appellees' rights to privacy. See Harris v. United States, D.C.App., 315 A.2d 569, 575 (1974); Morgan v. Detroit, 389 F.Supp. 922 (E.D.Mich. Feb. 24, 1975).