Opinion ID: 76651
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The District Court's Handling of the Record

Text: 53
54 Finally, we note our recognition of the district court's uncritical acceptance of the bare assertions contained in the ACLU's expert declarations — particularly in reaching conclusions outside, or even in apparent contradiction to, the documented historical record. 55 This perfunctory reliance was especially pronounced in the district court's deconstruction of the Comstock laws. The mere existence of both federal and state Comstock laws — especially the federal Comstock Act, which expressly prohibited importation and mail transport of every article ... for ... immoral use — seriously undermines the ACLU's fundamental-rights argument under Glucksberg. Instead, the district court's review of the Comstock laws led it to the conclusion that [t]he popularity, legality, and ease of access to sexual devices like vibrators and dildos further demonstrate that the firm legislative respect for sexual privacy in the marital relationship extended to deliberate non-interference with adults' use of sexual devices within those relationships. Id. at 1286. 56 The sole support for this rather cursory conclusion appears to have been the assertions of one Rachel Maines, an historian and author, who submitted two separate expert declarations on the ACLU's behalf. R3-56, Ex. A; R4-84, Ex. 4. Her declarations offered criticism of the Alabama statute going well beyond her specific expertise and delving into the legal and policy dimensions of the case: 57 Laws like Alabama's that target the appearance, packaging or marketing of [sexual] devices, rather than their functionality, thus do not prevent or mitigate the supposed evil of commerce of sexual stimulation and auto-eroticism, for its own sake (Brief of Alabama Attorney General, 21). Their effect is merely to benefit one set of retailers (drug stores, health food stores, and discount houses such as Walmart, GNC and Target) at the expense of another (marital aids vendors). 58 R3-56, Ex. A at 18-21. 59 On the historical record, if devices designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of the human genital organs represent an evil and/or a moral threat to the citizens of Alabama, the state has been remarkably dilatory in making this discovery, having waited for something more than two and a half millennia from the invention of the dildo and more than a century from the invention of the electromechanical vibrator to legislate against them. Apparently unconcerned about the availability of vibrators to consumers beginning in 1899, and even about their use in the production of orgasm in women, for which there was ample evidence by 1930, the state did not act against these devices until a small percentage of them took on anatomical forms, and until they began to be associated with a new interest in orgasmic mutuality in heterosexual relationships. Significantly, Viagra, which enhances sexual experience for men but not necessarily for women, is legal by prescription in all states, including those with laws against vibrators and dildos. As an historian and as a citizen, I fail to see what legitimate purpose is served by institutionalizing an hypocrisy in which the sale of a standard and traditional therapeutic device is rendered unlawful by sexual references in appearance, packaging or marketing. 60 Id. at 23-25. 61 Although Maines's statements suggest an agenda inconsistent with an unbiased and complete historical presentation, the district court nevertheless repeatedly relied on her factual assertions, usually without any independent verification. We note several typical examples: 62 &#x2022; In downplaying the historical significance of the Comstock laws, the district court emphasized that sexual devices were not the impetus for the so-called Comstock Acts. Williams III, 220 F.Supp.2d at 1286. The only support for this statement was Maines's declaration statement that vibrators and dildoes [sic] were not significant motivations for the passage and enforcement of the Comstock Act. R4-84, Ex. 4 at 2. However, we find in neither Maines's declaration nor the record elsewhere any evidence — aside from Maines's bare assertion — of the actual motivation behind passage and enforcement of the Act. 63 &#x2022; The record before the district court contained evidence that, according to records maintained by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, between 1871 and 1881, some 64,836 Articles of immoral use, of rubber, etc. were seized under the Comstock Act and other anti-vice laws. See Anthony Comstock, Traps for the Young 137 (Robert Bremner ed., Harvard University Press 1967) (1884). The district court, however, dismissed this evidence by quoting Maines's claim that these were almost all contraceptives. Williams III, 220 F.Supp.2d at 1286; R4-84, Ex. 4 at 3. Although our own review of the record confirms that the articles of rubber likely represented many condoms, our concern is the district court's casual dismissal of contemporaneous documentary evidence in favor of retrospective, and unsupported, characterizations of that evidence. Further, although Maines cited several authorities for her assertion, our review of her sources finds no support for the conclusion that the referenced articles were almost all contraceptives. 15 64 &#x2022; The district court's central holding — its discovery of a constitutional right to use sexual devices like ... vibrators, dildos, anal beads, and artificial vaginas — was based largely on unsupported statements from Maines's declarations. Williams III, 220 F.Supp.2d at 1296. In divining this right, the district court concluded that history and contemporary practice demonstrate a conscious avoidance of regulation of [sexual] devices by the states, Id. This conclusion was based on the emergence and widespread acceptance of the electric vibrator, id. at 1283, and [t]he popularity, legality, and ease of access to sexual devices like vibrators and dildos, id. at 1286. These findings in turn relied on Maines's declarations, particularly her assertion that [v]ibrators remained legal throughout this period, and were mailable matter under the Comstock laws of 1873 — 1914. Id. What both Maines's declaration and the district court's opinion omit is the fact that, according to Maines's own writings elsewhere, the vibrators available on the market during this period were general purpose vibrators marketed for non-sexual uses, such as massaging the hands, face, back, and neck. 16 The fact that these general purpose vibrators were legal and mailable is hardly probative of the legality of sexual devices as sexual devices. 65 Because of our conclusion supra that the constitutionality of Alabama's statute does not hinge on the enforcement, or lack thereof, of the Comstock laws, any error by the district court in its incorporation of Maines's litigation-motivated and litigation-tailored assertions was harmless. Nevertheless, the district court's truth-seeking duties should have compelled it to go behind Maines's assertions and satisfy itself of their reliability before relying on those assertions in recognizing a new fundamental constitutional right. 17 66 Moreover, this uncritical reliance on Maines's assertions appears to have been typical of a larger pattern. For example, the district court's history and tradition discussion was largely a paraphrased version of the ACLU's motion for summary judgment and its factual support appears to have consisted entirely of the ACLU's pleadings and selective appendices of historical interpretations of sex throughout American history. Of the 104 supporting footnotes in the district court's history and tradition analysis, 99 were citations to these pleadings and appendices. 67
68 The district court's rationale for its wholesale adoption of the ACLU's evidence appears to have been its mistaken view that the Alabama Attorney General had conceded the ACLU's evidence on the history and tradition question. The district court, as preface to its Glucksberg history and tradition analysis, stated that the court notes that it is extremely significant, if not dispositive, that the Attorney General concedes that `there is little evidence to show that sexual devices, or consensual sexual activities in general, have historically been subject to governmental regulation.' Williams III, 220 F.Supp.2d. at 1277 (quoting Attorney General's Memorandum in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment, at 16). 69 This not only misquoted the Attorney General's actual language, but mischaracterized it as a concession. In his memorandum supporting his motion for summary judgment, the Attorney General had devoted a section to describing Victorian-era proscriptions, and enforcement thereof, on sexual devices. R3-78 at 14-16. The following section began, Although there is little additional evidence to show that sexual devices, or consensual sexual activities in general, have historically been subject to governmental regulation, there is also no evidence to show that these activities have been specially protected under the law. Id. at 16 (emphasis added). That section went on to mention some of that additional evidence, such as efforts by the states to restrict sexual devices. Id. The district court's omission of the critical word additional, as well as its out-of-context quotation of a prefatory dependent clause, significantly altered the meaning of a statement that, in proper context, appears in no way to have been intended as a concession of one of the most significant and contested issues in the case. 70 Similarly, the district court elsewhere stated: The Attorney General concedes that `there is no genuine dispute as to the historical chronology set forth by the plaintiffs' experts,' to the effect that there is a `history or tradition of state non-interference in persons sex lives.' Williams III, 220 F.Supp.2d. at 1276 (quoting Attorney General's Memorandum in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment, at 16). 71 In fact, the Attorney General conceded only to the historical chronology set forth by the ACLU's experts and the liberalization of attitudes towards sex that this chronology demonstrated. R3-78 at 12. However, the Attorney General never conceded a history or tradition of state non-interference in persons sex lives. Significantly, the Attorney General's use of that phrase appeared four sentences prior to the chronology concession and itself was part of a sentence disputing the ACLU's version of history and tradition: In attempting to demonstrate a `history' or `tradition' of state non-interference in persons' sex lives, [the ACLU's] experts have proffered a lengthy history of sexuality. Id. The district court's omission of the quotation marks surrounding history and tradition particularly distorted the Attorney General's meaning. 72 The district court's reliance on these concessions appears to have been substantial. In announcing its holding that the ACLU's evidence demonstrated a fundamental right to sexual privacy, the district court stressed that [t]he Attorney General has conceded plaintiffs' evidence in this regard. Williams III, 220 F.Supp.2d. at 1294; see also id. at 1295 (Given the breadth, depth, volume, and weight of that evidence, and the Attorney General's concession, this court is compelled to agree [with plaintiffs-appellees].); id. at 1295-96 (holding that, in light of the ACLU's evidence and the concession to this evidence by the Attorney General, this court concludes that plaintiffs have met their burden). 73 To the contrary, the Attorney General's pleadings, while not disputing much of the ACLU's evidence about the liberalization of sexual norms, vigorously disputed both (a) the legal ramifications of that liberalization (e.g., that this liberalization, in itself, satisfied the fundamental-rights threshold) as well as (b) the contention that sexual devices had gone virtually unregulated throughout American history. R3-78 at 12-20. We conclude, however, that the district court's reliance on these putative concessions was, at worst, harmless error. The issues that the district court treated as having been conceded pertained to the existence of a fundamental right to sexual privacy, which, as we explained supra, was an over-broad framing of the inquiry in the first place.