Opinion ID: 175571
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the criminalization of a substantial amount of expressive activity

Text: Having delimited the reach of the statutes, we consider whether they criminalize a substantial amount of expressive activity. [15] States may restrict the access of minors to obscene material so long as the legislature has a rational basis to find that exposure to material condemned by the statute is harmful to minors. Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 641, 88 S.Ct. 1274, 20 L.Ed.2d 195 (1968). A state may impose such restrictions even if the material at issue is not obscene to adults. Am. Booksellers Found. v. Dean, 342 F.3d 96, 101 (2d Cir.2003). However, [s]peech that is neither obscene as to youths nor subject to some other legitimate proscription cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them. Erznoznik v. Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205, 213-14, 95 S.Ct. 2268, 45 L.Ed.2d 125 (1975). In Ginsberg, the Court upheld a New York statute that criminalized the sale of girlie magazines to persons under the age of seventeen. 390 U.S. at 631-33, 88 S.Ct. 1274. This statute incorporated the obscenity test previously articulated in Memoirs v. Massachusetts, namely, that a work is obscene if (a) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex; (b) the material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters; and (c) the material is utterly without redeeming social value. 383 U.S. 413, 418, 86 S.Ct. 975, 16 L.Ed.2d 1 (1966). Five years after Ginsberg, the Court revisited the question of the appropriate obscenity standard for adults in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973). The Court explicitly rejected the lack of redeeming social value prong set forth in Memoirs, holding that a state could criminalize the distribution of only those materials that taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Id. at 24, 93 S.Ct. 2607. [16] The Supreme Court has never explicitly extended the serious value standard to obscenity for minors. See Entm't Software Ass'n v. Blagojevich, 469 F.3d 641, 648 (7th Cir.2006) (citing cases). The parties, however, argue that Miller's amendment with respect to adults also applies to minors. A number of our sister circuits have approved of the adaptation of Miller to minors as well. See, e.g., Am. Booksellers v. Webb, 919 F.2d 1493, 1503 & n. 18 (11th Cir.1990); Am. Booksellers Ass'n v. Virginia, 882 F.2d 125, 127 n. 2 (4th Cir. 1989); M.S. News Co. v. Casado, 721 F.2d 1281, 1286-87 (10th Cir.1983). Ultimately, we need not decide this issue as the statutes are overbroad under both frameworks. Sections 054 and 057 sweep up material that, when taken as a whole, has serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors and thus also has at least some redeeming social value. Because the statutes sweep beyond Miller's more lenient definition of obscenity, they necessarily extend beyond the Ginsberg formulation as well. In addition, sections 054 and 057 do not limit themselves to material that predominantly appeals to minors' prurient interest. As a result, the statutes reach a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech. Because the statutes fail to satisfy the first two prongs of Miller/Ginsberg, we need not determine whether they also criminalize the furnishing of a significant amount of material that is not patently offensive.
Nothing in the language of the statutes, including the exemptions, takes the serious value of the work as a whole into account, or, for that matter, whether the work possesses any redeeming social value. A pair of examples from the record highlight the statutes' overbreadth in this regard. It's Perfectly Normal is a sexual education book containing simple line drawings that include non-obscene but unmistakable images of sexual intercourse and masturbation. As its subtitle indicates, the book provides frank information about changing bodies, growing up, sex & sexual health, and thus does not lack serious scientific value even for children under the age of thirteen. The images of sexual intercourse and masturbation are sexually explicit material and, pursuant to section 054, they may not be furnished to children under the age of thirteen. OR. REV. STAT. §§ 167.054(1); 167.051(5)(a). While their primary purpose is education rather than titillation, the images of sexual intercourse and masturbation are not an incidental portion of the work as a whole, as they cannot be considered subordinate or nonessential in a sexual education manual. Thus, the exemption fails to shelter sexual education materials like It's Perfectly Normal from liability. Similarly, section 057 sweeps up works like Forever, a coming-of-age novel written by Judy Blume. Forever includes explicit narrative accounts of masturbation, sexual intercourse, and genital-genital contact, which are all depictions of sexual conduct that may not be shared with minors, if the furnisher intends to arouse the minor or the furnisher. See OR. REV. STAT. §§ 167.057(a)-(b); 167.051(4)(a)-(b). But Forever certainly contains serious artistic or literary value as to minors as a whole, and the explicit narrative accounts in Forever are not incidental to the coming of age story. See Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coal., 535 U.S. 234, 248, 122 S.Ct. 1389, 152 L.Ed.2d 403 (2002) (explaining that inclusion of obscene portions that are part of the narrative of a non-obscene work do not cause the work itself . . . [to] become obscene). These examples are hardly exotic. They demonstrate that the statutes reach a substantial number of works that are not obscene to children or minors because they fail to take into account the value of the work as a whole.
The statutes also do not limit themselves to material that predominantly appeals to prurient interest. Such material is understood to trigger responses over and beyond normal sexual arousal. Brockett v. Spokane Arcades, Inc., 472 U.S. 491, 498-99, 105 S.Ct. 2794, 86 L.Ed.2d 394 (1985). Section 054 defines sexually explicit material to consist of visual images of sexual intercourse as well as more specific subcategories. This definition is broad enough to reach a substantial amount of material that does not appeal to the prurient interest of a child under thirteen, but merely appeals to regular sexual interest. Section 057 reaches even farther than section 054, criminalizing the furnishing of written and visual depictions of sexual intercourse, along with depictions of the [t]ouching of the genitals, pubic areas or buttocks of the human male or female or of the breasts of the human female, to minors as old as seventeen. OR. REV. STAT. §§ 167.051(4)(d); 167.057(1)(a). As the district court found, section 057 thus criminalizes fiction no more tawdry than a romance novel, written or created to arouse the reader [or] viewer. Powell's Books, 599 F.Supp.2d at 1246. In this respect, section 057 also reaches a substantial amount of expressive activity that does not appeal to the prurient interests of minors. The exemption does not cure this overbreadth as it focuses on titillation, and not prurient interest. Titillation and arousal are not synonymous with an abnormal or prurient sexual response as described in Brockett. To criminalize furnishing material solely intended to titillate the reader will certainly sweep up some material that appeals to the prurient interest of children and minors, but it will also criminalize a broad swath of material that does not appeal to prurient interests. By restricting the dissemination and use of non-obscene material, the statutes trench on the First Amendment rights of minors and adults alike. On the one hand, the statutes limit minors' access to expressive material that the state may not legitimately proscribe. See Erznoznik, 422 U.S. at 213-14, 95 S.Ct. 2268. On the other, the statutes also restrict adults from providing minors with materials that are entirely anodyne for First Amendment purposes. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that the state may not prevent adults from circulating non-obscene materials amongst themselves. See Ashcroft, 535 U.S. at 252, 122 S.Ct. 1389. Although we apply a variable standard for obscenity to minors, it is equally true that the state may not restrict adults from sharing material with minors that is not obscene for minors. The statutes' overbreadth impinges on the rights of all individuals to legitimately share and access non-obscene materials without the interference of the state.