Opinion ID: 75034
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Fundamental Rights Analysis

Text: In their fundamental rights arguments, the plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of the statute on its face and as applied. We conclude the district court correctly rejected the facial challenge, but we remand the as-applied challenges.
“A facial challenge to be successful ‘must establish that no set of 17 circumstances exists under which the Act would be valid.’” Adler v. Duval County School Bd., 206 F.3d 1070, 1083-84 (11th Cir. 2000) (en banc) (quoting United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745, 107 S. Ct. 2095, 2100 (1987)). Unless the statute is unconstitutional in all its applications, an as-applied challenge must be used to attack its constitutionality. Initially, we must determine how to frame the nature and scope of a constitutional right that would facially invalidate the Alabama statute. Alabama maintains the plaintiffs are claiming simply a “right to sell or buy” sexual devices. Such a right would receive little constitutional protection because ordinary economic and commercial regulations are subject only to rational basis scrutiny. See, e.g., Beach Communications, 508 U.S. at 314, 113 S. Ct. at 2101 (“In areas of social and economic policy, . . . any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the” statute is sufficient to sustain its constitutionality); Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc., 348 U.S. 483, 489, 75 S. Ct. 461, 465 (1955). The plaintiffs respond that a right of greater constitutional significance is at stake: in the narrowest sense, the plaintiffs assert a fundamental “right to use” sexual devices; more generally, the plaintiffs invoke the Supreme Court’s cases establishing a constitutionally protected fundamental right to privacy. The district court narrowly framed the analysis as the question 18 “whether the concept of a constitutionally protected ‘right to privacy’ protects an individual’s liberty to use [sexual devices] when engaging in lawful, private, sexual activity.” 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1275; see also id. at 1281 & n.30. For purposes of the facial challenge, the right is more precisely stated as whether the Constitution protects such liberty of every individual. In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678, 97 S. Ct. 2010 (1977), we conclude the district court correctly framed the fundamental rights analysis in this case. Following its decisions holding a state may not criminalize every sale or distribution of contraceptives, see Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 92 S. Ct. 1029 (1972), the Supreme Court struck down a narrower New York law criminalizing the sale of contraceptives to persons under 16 years of age and the sale of contraceptives by non-pharmacists. See Carey, 431 U.S. at 681-82, 97 S. Ct. at 2014. The Court explained that: [T]he Constitution protects individual decisions in matters of childbearing from unjustified intrusion by the State. Restrictions on the distribution of contraceptives clearly burden the freedom to make such decisions. . . . This is so not because there is an independent fundamental “right of access to contraceptives,” but because such access is essential to exercise of the constitutionally protected right of decision in matters of childbearing that is the underlying foundation of the holdings in Griswold, Eisenstadt v. Baird, and Roe v. Wade. 431 U.S. at 687-89, 97 S. Ct. at 2017-18; see also id. at 689-91, 97 S. Ct. at 210819 19 (concluding that New York law fails strict scrutiny for lack of compelling state interest). Similarly, because the statute prohibiting the distribution of sexual devices would burden an individual’s ability to use the devices, the analysis in this case must be framed not in terms of whether the Constitution protects a right to sell or buy sexual devices, but rather in terms of whether there is a fundamental constitutional interest—broad or narrow—that encompasses a right to use sexual devices and invalidates this statute on its face. We conclude there is no controlling precedent that specifically establishes the facial unconstitutionality of this statute.7 The fundamental constitutional rights of privacy recognized to date by the Supreme Court in the area of sexual activity each have followed from the Court’s protection of a person’s right to make the 7 Alabama suggests two precedents interpreting similar statutes, Sewell v. Georgia, 435 U.S. 982, 98 S. Ct. 1635 (1978), and Red Bluff Drive-In, Inc. v. Vance, 648 F.2d 1020 (5th Cir. June 1981) (binding authority under Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209 (11th Cir.1981) (en banc)), establish the constitutionality of this statute. We conclude neither decision is controlling here. The Supreme Court in Sewell dismissed an appeal from the Supreme Court of Georgia for want of a substantial federal question, see 435 U.S. at 982, 98 S. Ct. at 1635, a disposition that “prevent[s] lower courts from coming to opposite conclusions on the precise issues presented and necessarily decided by those actions.” Langelier v. Coleman, 861 F.2d 1508, 1511 (11th Cir. 1988) (quoting Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173, 176, 97 S. Ct. 2238, 2240 (1977)) (emphasis added). The only issues necessarily decided in Sewell, however, were First Amendment obscenity arguments. See Sewell v. State, 233 S.E.2d 187, 188-89 (Ga. 1977). Similarly, Vance decided only a First Amendment obscenity challenge. See 648 F.2d at 1027-28. 20 decision not to procreate without governmental interference. Specifically, the Court has repeatedly sustained a right to prevent pregnancy through the use of contraceptives, see Griswold, 381 U.S. at 479, 85 S. Ct. at 1678; Eisenstadt, 405 U.S. at 438, 92 S. Ct. at 1029; Carey, 431 U.S. at 678, 97 S. Ct. at 2010, as well as a woman’s qualified right to terminate a pregnancy, see, e.g., Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 112 S. Ct. 2791 (1992); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705 (1973). More than half a century ago, the Court also protected the right to procreate, invalidating a state’s provision for involuntary sterilization of habitual criminals. See Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 62 S. Ct. 1110 (1942). The Court also has recognized other fundamental rights, including rights of privacy unrelated to sexual activity, that protect personal autonomy from governmental intrusion. See, e.g., Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dep’t of Health, 497 U.S. 186, 110 S. Ct. 2841 (1990) (sustaining right to refuse medical treatment); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S. Ct. 1817 (1967) (invalidating ban on interracial marriage). None of these cases, however, is decisive on the question whether the Constitution protects every individual’s right to private sexual activity and use of sexual devices from being burdened by Alabama’s sexual device distribution criminal statute. We therefore must determine whether we may, in this case, recognize an 21 “extension of the ‘right to privacy[,]’ which the Supreme Court has recognized as fundamental in certain contexts,” that is broad enough to facially invalidate the Alabama statute. 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1275; see id. at 1282. Extending the constitutional right to privacy to include a broad fundamental right to all sexual autonomy, such as a privacy right to engage in any form of private consensual sexual behavior between adults, is directly precluded by Supreme Court precedent. In Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 106 S. Ct. 2841 (1986), the Supreme Court sustained against a fundamental right to privacy challenge Georgia’s criminal sodomy statute as applied to homosexual conduct.8 The Court reviewed its fundamental rights precedent and expressly noted that “any claim that these cases . . . stand for the proposition that any kind of private sexual conduct between consenting adults is constitutionally insulated from state proscription is unsupportable.” Id. at 191, 106 S. Ct. at 2844; see also Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 727, 117 S. Ct. at 2271 (“That many of the rights and liberties protected by the Due Process Clause sound in personal autonomy does not warrant the sweeping 8 A panel of this Court had recognized a broad fundamental right to sexual privacy, relying particularly upon the Supreme Court’s contraception and abortion cases, in precluding Georgia from criminalizing private consensual adult sodomy. See Hardwick v. Bowers, 760 F.2d 1202, 1210-13 (11th Cir. 1985). The Supreme Court reversed, by a 5-4 majority, emphasizing the traditional prohibition of homosexual sodomy. See Bowers, 478 U.S. at 190-96, 106 S. Ct. at 2844-46. 22 conclusion that any and all important, intimate, and personal decisions are so protected. . . .”). In light of Bowers, there would be no violation of any fundamental constitutional right to the extent the application of Alabama’s statute infringed upon the sexual activity of homosexuals. The statute has possible constitutional applications and therefore is not facially unconstitutional. The district court correctly rejected the plaintiffs’ facial challenge to the statute.
We conclude the district court did not adequately consider the as-applied fundamental rights challenges raised by the plaintiffs. Accordingly, we remand for the district court to consider these claims in the first instance. The district court failed to specifically consider the as-applied challenges raised by the four “user” plaintiffs. Betty Faye Haggermaker and Alice Jean Cope are married women who use sexual devices with their husbands. See 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1264. Sherry Taylor-Williams and Jane Doe began using sexual devices in marital intimacy but both are now single. See id. at 1264-65. Although the statute is not facially unconstitutional because, in light of Bowers, it may constitutionally be applied to homosexual activity—and the district court therefore correctly declined to recognize an expansive fundamental right encompassing the 23 use of sexual devices in every kind of lawful, private, sexual activity—the asapplied challenges raised by the plaintiffs, married or unmarried, implicate interests in sexual privacy different from those rejected in Bowers. See Griswold, 381 U.S. at 485-86, 85 S. Ct. at 1682 (“Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms . . ? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.”); Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 720, 117 S. Ct. at 2267 (citing Griswold as holding the Constitution protects a fundamental right “to marital privacy”); Bowers, 478 U.S. at 188 n.2, 190-91, 106 S. Ct. 2842, 2843-44 (noting significance of fact that no constitutional challenge to sodomy statute concerning marriage had been properly presented); see also Casey, 505 U.S. at 898, 112 S. Ct. at 2831 (invalidating provision requiring notification of married woman’s spouse before abortion could be performed because “[w]omen do not lose their constitutionally protected liberty when they marry. The Constitution protects all individuals, male or female, married or unmarried, from the abuse of governmental power, even where that power is employed for the supposed benefit of a member of the individual’s family”); Eisenstadt, 405 U.S. at 453, 92 S. Ct. at 1033 (“[T]he rights of the individual to [have] access to contraceptives . . . must be the same for the unmarried and married alike.”); Bowers, 478 U.S. at 209 n.4, 106 S. Ct. at 2853 n.4 (Blackmun, J., dissenting) (questioning validity of 24 categorizations of sexual activity depending on marital status); id. at 216, 106 S. Ct. at 2857 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (citing Eisenstadt and Carey as holding that fundamental rights protection in sexual matters “extends to intimate choices by unmarried as well as married persons”). We remand the as-applied challenges for due consideration by the district court because the record and stipulations in this case simply are too narrow to permit us to decide whether or to what extent the Alabama statute infringes a fundamental right to sexual privacy of the specific plaintiffs in this case. In Glucksberg, its most recent case in which an argument for recognition of a new fundamental right was presented, the Supreme Court instructed that a fundamental right must be “objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if [the right] were sacrificed.” 521 U.S. at 720-21, 117 S. Ct. at 2268 (citations and quotations omitted). In concluding the Constitution did not include such a fundamental right of physician-assisted suicide, the Court discussed at length not only the long history of the proscription of suicide and assisting suicide but also the considerable contemporary nationwide legislative action to preserve such laws. See id. at 710-19, 117 S. Ct. at 2262-67. By contrast, in this case the district court considered in two paragraphs only whether the “use of sexual 25 devices” is a deeply rooted and central liberty. See 41 F. Supp. 2d at 1283-84 & n.33. The court analyzed neither whether our nation has a deeply rooted history of state interference, or state non-interference, in the private sexual activity of married or unmarried heterosexual persons nor whether contemporary practice bolsters or undermines any such history. The record is bare of evidence on these important questions. Absent the kind of careful consideration the Supreme Court performed in Glucksberg, we are unwilling to decide the as-applied fundamental rights analysis and accordingly remand those claims to the district court.