legal

Justices to Hear Woman’s DOMA Challenge (The National Law Journal)

by Viviane on 12/11/2024

in legal

WASHINGTON – Opening the door to a potentially historic step in the nation’s gay rights movement, the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 10 agreed to decide two constitutional challenges involving same-sex ?marriage.

The justices will review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit holding unconstitutional a section of the Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage, for federal government purposes, as exclusively a union between one man and one woman (NYLJ, Oct. 19).

The challenge to DOMA was brought by Edith Windsor, an 83-year-old New Yorker who was forced to pay more than $363,000 in federal estate taxes after the death of Thea Seyer, whom she had married in Canada.

Windsor would not have had to pay any estate taxes if their marriage had been treated the same way as heterosexual couples.

The news was welcomed by lawyers for Windsor who successfully argued her case, first before Southern District Judge Barbara Jones (See Profile) and then before the Second Circuit: Roberta Kaplan of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and James Esseks of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Kaplan, who will argue Windsor’s case at the Supreme Court in March—her first argument before the high court—said her client was “clearly thrilled.”

“She’s had a long fight,” said Kaplan. “She’s been fighting for this for over half a lifetime” of “living with discrimination.”

Read full story: http://bit.ly/T53Vrc

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When Is Bondage Prostitution? Records May Help Set Boundaries (New York Law Journal)

by Viviane on 09/09/2024

in legal, sexwork

by Mark Fass

A Manhattan judge has ordered the New York City Police Department to shine a light on the hazy legal line separating bondage, domination and sadomasochism from prostitution.

In a decision last week, Supreme Court Justice Carol R. Edmead directed the NYPD to provide the Urban Justice Center’s Sex Workers Project with documents regarding police investigations of several Manhattan bondage, domination and sadomasochism clubs between 2006 and 2008.

The judge, however, ruled that the police department is not required to turn over a copy of a confidential Vice Enforcement Division manual, which sets forth the procedures used by undercover agents to identify, engage and arrest suspected prostitutes.

“Disclosure of this information…would ‘furnish the safecracker with the combination to the safe,’ as it would alert the potential violators of the prostitution laws to the unique factors and methods the undercover police officers are likely to use to communicate with the other members of the team,” Justice Edmead wrote in Urban Justice Center v. New York Police Department, 400988/2010 (Subscription reqd).

The Sex Workers Project, which provides legal services and policy advocacy for people who work in the sex industry—exotic dancers, dominatrices and pornography actors, among others—considers the contested documents essential to understanding how the NYPD interprets and enforces New York Penal Law 230.00, the single-sentence statute that prohibits engaging in “sexual conduct” for a fee, but fails to define “sexual conduct.”

Since NYPL 230.00 was enacted in 1969—”prostitution” had previously been treated as a form of vagrancy, according to the annotated McKinney’s Penal Law—the definition of “sexual conduct” has slowly been teased out by the courts. Homosexual intercourse is “sexual conduct,” courts have ruled, though “lap dancing” is not—so long as the person providing the lap does not touch the dancer’s naked breasts or buttocks.

The case law provides scant guidance regarding bondage, domination and “fetish for a fee” services. Only a single reported opinion, the 1994 Brooklyn Criminal Court decision People v. Georgia A., 163 Misc.2d 634, addresses whether such acts constitute prohibited “sexual conduct.”

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Proposition 8 Case Stay Order Denied (Perry et al v. Schwarzeneggar)

by Viviane on 08/12/2024

in gay marriage, legal

U.S. Distrist Court website, Perry et a. v. Schwarzenegger

#728 Final Stay Order:

PERMANENT INJUNCTION. This action having come before and tried by the court and the court considered the same pursuant to FRCP 52(a), on August 4, 2010, ordered entry of judgment in favor of plaintiffs and plaintiff-intervenors and against defendants and defendant-intervenors and each of them, Doc #708, now therefore: IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that: Defendants in their official capacities, and all persons under the control or supervision of defendants, are permanently enjoined from applying or enforcing Article I,  Sec 7.5 of the California Constitution.

…That judgment shall be STAYED until August 18, 2010 at 5 PM PDT at which time defendants and all persons under their control or supervision shall cease to apply or
enforce Proposition 8.

#716 Memorandum in Opposition re 705 MOTION to Stay Pending Appeal filed byEdmund G. Brown, Jr.
#717 Memorandum in Opposition re 705 MOTION to Stay Pending Appeal filed byMark B. Horton, Arnold Schwarzenegger
#718 Memorandum in Opposition re 705 MOTION to Stay Pending Appeal filed byCity and County of San Francisco, Paul T. Katami, Kristin M. Perry, Sandra B. Stier, Jeffrey J. Zarrillo

Perry et al. v. Schwarzenegger opinion (U.S. District Court of California, Northern District)

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High court reinstates conviction of sex trafficker (CNN)

by Viviane on 06/01/2024

in crime, legal

Washington (CNN) – The criminal conviction of a sex trafficker known as the “S&M Svengali” was reinstated by the Supreme Court on Monday.

The case gave the justices a rare visit to the shadowy world of sadomasochism and sex slavery.

The high court by a 7-1 vote allowed the original conviction of Glenn Marcus to stand. He had been sentenced to nine years in prison for the sexual abuse, physical mutilation, and psychological humiliation of a woman who had agreed to be photographed as his “sex slave.”

A federal appeals court in New York had dismissed the entire conviction, saying some of the offenses occurred before the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which was used to prosecute Marcus.

But Justice Stephen Breyer said the procedural violations in this case were not so severe to justify throwing out the entire case, since some of the offenses clearly occurred after the law was passed.

“Given the tiny risk that the jury would have based its conviction upon those few pre-enactment days alone,” said Breyer, “a refusal to recognize such an error as a ‘plain error’; [and to set aside the verdict] is most unlikely to cast serious doubt on the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of the judicial system.”

Establishing a clear standard for “plain error” review when setting aside convictions has been a particularly tricky area of law for the Supreme Court in recent years.

Link

See also:

Second Circuit’s “plain error” standard struck down in Marcus (SCOTUSblog)

United States v. Marcus (08-1341) (Legal Information Institute)

ABA: U.S. Supreme Court Update (Criminal Law Library Blog)

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Sex blogger wins libel case against Independent on Sunday (Guardian News)

by Viviane on 05/24/2024

in legal, sexbloggers

Zoe Margolis, the writer behind the Girl With a One Track Mind blog and books, has won libel damages after the Independent on Sunday called her a “hooker” in a headline.Margolis launched a libel action against the newspaper after it referred to her as a “hooker” in a headline on an article on 7 March that she wrote for them, which was in the paper and online.The article, which was published with the headline “I was a hooker who became an agony aunt”, was about attitudes to women and sex.Margolis launched legal proceedings against the title's then-owner, Independent News & Media. The parties have reached an out-of-court settlement.

Congratulations, Zoe!

Link

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