Opinion ID: 1775238
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Theatre and Bookstore Employees

Text: We reserve judgment on whether the district judge was correct in this ruling, because defendants on appeal have called our attention to a more serious flaw in paragraph C of the statute. The last clause of paragraph C, in effect, subjects to criminal responsibility non-managerial, non-proprietary theatre and bookstore employees if there is no person having managerial duties or a financial interest in the business subject to immediate arrest and prosecution. Thus the meaning of this clause is of crucial importance to a small class of potential defendants in obscenity prosecutions. Appellees argue that this clause is ambiguous and does not give fair notice of the circumstances under which a bookstore or theatre employee, having no managerial duties or financial interest in the business, may be penalized for exhibiting or selling obscene materials. They point out that to immunize the clerical employee the statute does not specify where the managerial or financially interested superior must be in order to be subject to immediate arrest and prosecution: on the premises, within the parish, within the judicial district, or merely within the State? Additionally, we find the paragraph unclear because it does not say when this person must be subject to immediate arrest in order to insulate the clerical employee from criminal liability. It could refer to the time at which the police first detect a violation of the statute at the premises, to the entire period during which the police have knowledge of violations there, to the time of the pre-arrest hearing if one is required by paragraph F(1) of the statute, to any time the police propose to make an arrest as a result of a violation on the premises, or to any time prior to the actual conviction of the clerical employee for obscenity. We are asked to invoke the precepts of our recent decision in Connick v. Lucky Pierre's, 331 So.2d 431 (La.1976) and find that the statute fails to fulfill the due process requirement that statutes be sufficiently definite to give notice as to what conduct is necessary to avoid legal sanctions. However, La.R.S. 13:4711 et seq., the statute we declared unconstitutional in Lucky Pierre's, suffered from a greater degree of vagueness than La.R.S. 14:106(C). La.R.S. 13:4711 et seq. attempted to require owners, lessees, sublessees, employees and those persons acting in concert with them to institute and proceed with legal action necessary to enjoin any acts of prostitution, assignation or obscenity which they knew were taking place in a building over which they had control or in which they were employed. As pointed out in our opinion in that case, the possible interpretations of the phrase, legal action necessary to enjoin, as well as the persons against whom the actions should be taken, were multitudinous, and the vagueness struck at the very heart of the legislation so as to render it impossible to determine the acts or omissions which the legislature sought to prohibit. See, Connick v. Lucky Pierre's, supra . The issue here is distinguishable because the obscenity statute is sufficiently definite to give notice as to what conduct is necessary to avoid legal sanctions. See, State v. Amato, 343 So.2d 698 (La.1977), decided this day. The uncertainty with which we are now dealing is crucial only to determining which non-managerial, non-proprietary bookstore and theatre employees are to be subjected to criminal sanctions because of the absence of someone having a financial or executive interest in the business. Because the ambiguity affects a subsidiary portion of the statute, it would perhaps be permissible to save the provision by construing it as strictly as possible in favor of defendants. However, under any saving construction of the words subject to immediate arrest and prosecution, some clerical bookstore and theatre employees would be subjected to criminal proceedings whereas others would not, depending on whether their superiors are subject to immediate arrest and prosecution. Thus the law does not afford all such employees equal treatment, and raises a question as to whether the distinction between the two classes of clerical employees has been drawn upon a reasonable basis. We do not think that it has. To make a person's exposure to a possible fine of $2,000 and possible imprisonment at hard labor for five years completely dependent upon whether another person is subject to immediate arrest and prosecution seems to us entirely unfair and unreasonable. Accordingly, we conclude that the last clause of La.R.S. 14:106(C) is unconstitutional because it denies equal protection of the law to one class of clerical bookstore and theatre employees. U.S.Const. amend. XIV, § 1; La.Const. art. 1, § 3 (1974). Nevertheless, we do not agree with the defendants-appellees that a judicial determination of partial invalidity of the statute in this respect so disembowels the legislation that it must fall as a whole. Instead, we conclude that the repugnant provision is separable from the remainder of the statute, which it is therefore our duty to uphold. The obscenity statute was enacted by Act No. 274 of the 1974 regular session of the legislature, and included the following severability clause: If any provision or item of this Act or the application thereof is held invalid, such invalidity shall not affect other provisions, items or applications of this Act which can be given effect without the invalid provisions, items or applications, and to this end the provisions of this Act are hereby declared severable. Since the balance of the statute can be given effect without the invalid provision, the requirements of the severability clause have been met. Notwithstanding this, there are well recognized precepts of statutory construction which also must be considered. To be capable of separate enforcement, the valid portion of an enactment must be independent of the invalid portion and must form a complete act within itself. The law enforced after separation must be reasonable in light of the act as originally drafted. The test is whether or not the legislature would have passed the statute had it been presented with the invalid features removed. 2 Sutherland, Statutes and Statutory Construction, § 44.04 at 341-42 (Sands 4th ed. 1973) (footnotes omitted). A further inquiry which courts make in determining legislative intent in regard to the separability of statutes is into the dominant or main purpose of the enactment. Where the purpose of the statute is defeated by the invalidity of part of the act, the entire act is void. Conversely, when the general object of the act can be achieved without the invalid part, the act will be upheld. Id. § 44.07 at 347 (footnotes omitted). It is well recognized among the legal community of the State that Act 274 of 1974 was designed to fill the void created by our decisions in State v. Shreveport News Agency, Inc., 287 So.2d 464 (La.1974) and State v. McNutt, 287 So.2d 478 (La.1974), which invalidated the state statutory regulation of obscenity, as was militated by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973). See, Highlights of the 1974 Regular SessionObscenity Regulation, 35 La.L.Rev. 601 (1975). The title of the 1974 act declares that its purpose was to define the crime of obscenity, to provide penalties therefor, to provide for the applicability and construction of the Act, and to provide otherwise with respect thereto. The language of the act itself indicates that the dominant or main purpose of the legislation was to adopt the Miller definition of obscenity and to state specifically the kinds of representations or descriptions of sexual conduct which could be found to constitute obscenity as is also required by the Miller decision. See, State v. Amato, supra . Clearly the main purpose of the obscenity statute will not be defeated by the invalidity of the last clause of paragraph C. The only effect will be to grant immunity from conviction to all theatre and bookstore employees having no managerial duties and no financial interest, other than wages, in the dissemination of obscene materials, rather than exposing some of these employees to criminal sanctions simply because no person having managerial duties or a financial interest in the materials is subject to immediate arrest and prosecution. Without the repugnant clause the statute forms a complete act within itself, and is reasonable in light of the act as originally drafted. Because the main goal of the legislature was to provide the state a valid and enforceable obscenity statute, and since it has previously granted unqualified immunity to nonmanagerial theatre employees, see La.Acts numbers 605 and 743 of 1972, we conclude the legislature would have passed the statute had it been presented with the last clause of paragraph C removed. Accordingly, we hold that although the provision is unconstitutional, it is severable from the remainder of paragraph C and the other paragraphs of La.R.S. 14:106.