The South Dakota House Judiciary Committee last week voted unanimously to endorse the state’s copycat version of the age verification legislation being sponsored around the country by anti-porn religious conservative activists, which the bill’s backers have described as part of a national campaign to fight online “filth.”
Republicans across the nation continue their ongoing campaign to legally redefine “prurient” — along with other terms like “obscenity,” “pornography” and “harmful to minors” — through diverse pieces of state legislation concerning topics such as online age verification, the purchase of library materials and the zoning of venues allowing drag shows.
The ongoing Free Speech saga pitching one South Dakota inmate against his prison’s policy banning sexual content will continue after the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals is again considering the case.
A federal judge issued his opinion yesterday ruling that the South Dakota prison system’s extreme ban on what they term “sexual content” is unconstitutional.
A state representative in South Dakota introduced a bizarre bill last Thursday that attempts to create a loophole to censor sexual expression while avoiding the obvious First Amendment issues.
This week, federal judges for the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a district court judge to address a controversial South Dakotan law banning pornography in prisons.
