Opinion ID: 584639
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Enforcement of Anti-Obscenity Statutes

Text: 27 Appellants have claimed that they are threatened with the unfair application of the State's anti-obscenity statutes. 5 They did not claim that the statutes themselves are invalid, but asserted that Officer Hagner acted arbitrarily in enforcing the statutes in his seizure in 1984, and that he has recently made threats suggesting that he will take such unjustified discretionary action again in the future. 6 28 In Ellis v. Dyson, 421 U.S. 426, 432 (1975), the Supreme Court, citing its opinion in Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452 (1974), held that federal declaratory relief is not precluded when no state prosecution is pending and a federal plaintiff demonstrates a genuine threat of enforcement of a disputed state criminal statute, whether an attack is made on the constitutionality of the statute on its face or as applied. In Babbitt v. United Farm Workers National Union, 442 U.S. 289, 302 (1979) (citation omitted), the Court held that when fear of criminal prosecution under an allegedly unconstitutional statute is not imaginary or wholly speculative a plaintiff need not first expose himself to actual arrest or prosecution to be entitled to challenge the statute. The question on appeal, therefore, is whether the appellants have indicated a genuine, non-imaginary or nonspeculative threat that the statutes in question will be enforced in an unconstitutional manner. 29 A recent decision by a Maryland appellate court directly addressed the type of search and seizure performed by Officer Hagner in 1984 in appellants' store pursuant to § 416D, and concluded that [t]he Fourth Amendment does not permit the issuance of a warrant that leaves it entirely to the discretion of the officers conducting the search to decide what items are obscene and are therefore subject to seizure. Randall Book Corp v. State, 497 A.2d 1174, 1180 (Md.App. 1985). Subsequent to the decision in Randall, a police officer is not imbued with the kind of arbitrary authority allegedly exercised by Hagner in 1984, when he determined the propriety of displayed material, and feared by appellants in the future. Prior to Randall, concern about a repeat of the arbitrary seizure carried out in 1984 might have been considered something other than speculative. But given the Maryland Court of Appeals specific indication of the proper procedure, a conclusion that the past, now disfavored, activity would be likely to be repeated is highly speculative. 30 Given the extreme unlikelihood that the feared unconstitutional enforcement of the State statute alleged by appellants will occur, the district court properly determined that appellants did not have standing to bring their claims for relief concerning the State statutes.