Opinion ID: 77229
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Proceedings After Remand

Text: On May 20, 2002, the district court ordered that the mandate from this Court become the judgment of the district court. On remand, the district court did not address the remaining prerequisites for a preliminary injunction. Rather, the district court again addressed the question of whether § 16-12-80 violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights. Although this Court had already concluded that § 16-12-80 contained a complete ban on advertising even to legal consumers and that this per se advertising ban violated the First Amendment, the district court revisited these issues. The district court ordered briefing on whether the advertising provision of § 16-12-80 could be severed in order to save the statute.4 The defendants submitted their brief on severability on August 23, 2002. According to the defendants, “the unconstitutional provision consisting of the term[] ‘advertise’[] can be properly severed or stricken from the statute, leaving the remainder of the statute intact.” Section 16-12-80(a) makes it unlawful when a person “sells, lends, rents, leases, gives, advertises, publishes, exhibits, or district court could probably have gone either way in its decision to a preliminary injunction. In such a case, there can be no abuse of discretion.”). 4 In that regard, on August 7, 2002, the district court entered an order stating: “[b]oth parties . . . have brought it to the Court’s attention that the interest of judicial economy would be served by the Court’s adjudication of the issue of severability of the advertising provision of O.C.G.A. § 16-12-80 before the parties proceed with any other matters.” Thus, the district court ordered the parties to address the “severability issue.” It is unclear how and when the parties brought this severability issue to the district court’s attention. 13 otherwise disseminates” any obscene material. Essentially, the defendants argued that if the district court removed the term “advertises” from § 16-12-80(a), the statute would be constitutional. At no point did the defendants reassert that advertising targeted at medical practitioners or legal consumers was already permitted under § 16-12-80 or that “dissemination” as used in the affirmative defense in § 16-12-80(e) could, or should, be construed to include advertising. The plaintiffs then filed their response regarding the issue of severability. Although not a picture of clarity, the plaintiffs’ response argued that severing the term “advertise” from section (a) would not cure the constitutional problem because “it is the act of advertising – not the word ‘advertises’ – which is protected by the First Amendment.” According to the plaintiffs, the prohibitions against publishing or exhibiting materials in section (a) could reasonably be read to affect their First Amendment right to advertise to legal consumers. The plaintiffs further asserted that it was unclear how the Georgia legislature would respond given the “infirmities” in § 16-12-80. The plaintiffs argued that because there were different options available to the Georgia legislature, it was improper for a federal district court to select among them. The defendants filed a reply brief and characterized this Court’s prior decision in This That I as follows: 14 The Eleventh Circuit held that the per se ban on advertising as applied to sexual devices violated the First Amendment because advertisements targeting consumers of “lawful” sexual devices as provided in O.C.G.A. § 16-12-80(e) would not be misleading. The Court also held that the per se prohibition on advertising relating to sexual devices was too extensive because the prohibition failed to take into account sexual devices that could be lawfully distributed to certain consumers. Again, the defendants argued that “there are no countervailing considerations that would prohibit severance and/or partial invalidation of the term advertise as applied to sexual devices.” At no point did the defendants reassert that advertising targeted at medical practitioners or legal consumers was already permitted under Georgia’s obscenity statute or that “dissemination” as used in the affirmative defense in § 16-12-80(e) could, or should, be construed to include advertising. After briefing, the district court on remand entered an order once again denying the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction. In that order, the district court stated that “[t]he Eleventh Circuit opinion does not address whether the statute may be saved through severance or the imposition of a limiting construction.” The district court first concluded that § 16-12-80 could not be saved by severing only the term “advertises” from subsection (a) of § 16-12-80, explaining that [t]o fully protect the First Amendment right to advertise, as identified by the Eleventh Circuit, the Court would have to sever other terms in the statute that overlap with the term ‘advertise.’ Even if the statute 15 could be severed in such an extensive manner, the Court cannot be reasonably certain that the legislature would have enacted an obscenity statute that allows distributors to advertise expressive obscene material, particularly where the statute prohibits the sale of such material. However, the district court reasoned that “[a]s an alternative to severance, the Court may avoid invalidating the statute in its entirety if the statute is ‘readily susceptible’ to a limiting construction.” According to the district court, “the plain language of the statute shows that it is readily susceptible to a limiting construction.” The district court looked to the affirmative defense in subsection (e) of § 16-12-80 and noted that the Georgia legislature in § 16-12-80(e) had permitted the sale of sexual devices to particular consumers. The district court reasoned that “the Georgia legislature has, in effect, provided the Court with the necessary guidance for limiting the statute’s advertising ban in a way that comports with the First Amendment.” The district court determined that “[a] clear line may be drawn between advertising directed at the general public and advertising directed at lawful consumers.” The district court concluded that, in the absence of any legislative intent to the contrary, Georgia’s obscenity “statute should be invalidated only insofar as it prohibits the advertising of sexual devices targeted at the lawful consumers identified in subsection (e).” The district court, in effect, interpreted § 16-12-80(e) to include the term 16 advertising in that affirmative defense.5 Focusing on only the legal issue as to the construction of § 16-12-80, the district court ruled that the plaintiffs did not have a substantial likelihood of success on the merits regarding the constitutionality “of the statute as it has now been construed.” The district court once again addressed only the legal issue as to whether § 16-12-80 violated the First Amendment, and never addressed the other prerequisites for a preliminary injunction. The district court again denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, and subsequently granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Plaintiffs again appeals.