Last week I blogged about the federal suit brought by teens and parents in Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, against a local prosecutor who threatened the teens with felony child porn and sexual abuse charges for taking "provocative" photos of themselves on their cell phones.
The federal judge hearing the case has now issued a temporary restraining order (PDF), prohibiting the D.A. from bringing charges against these young women. The judge found it likely that they would prevail in proving that (1) the photos at issue did not violate any law, (2) the teens had a First Amendment right to refuse to participate in a five-week education and counseling program the D.A. sought to force them to attend, (3) the parents had a fundamental privacy right to refuse such a program for their children, and (4) the D.A. retaliated against the plaintiffs for refusing to participate in the program by threatening felony charges.
(A technical note: The judge also rejected the prosecutor's argument that he lacked the power to interfere with state prosecutions. The court explained that the federal "abstention" rule only prohibits federal courts from intervening in ongoing state prosecutions, not threats of prosecution. If the rule applied to threats of prosecution, after all, it could block a lot of pre-enforcement challenges to state laws that, e.g. abridge the freedom of speech.)
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