In February, U.S. District Judge C. Lynwood Smith, Jr., issued an opinion on Williams v. King stating the outlawing of commercial distribution of sex toys in Alabama is constitutional.

The history of this case is highlighted in this snippet from Lesbian/Gay Law Notes:

It suffices to say that this case, which has been twice to the court of appeals after Judge Smith had declared the law unconstitutional in prior decisions, has generated four lengthy, searching decisions prior to this one, all attempting to cope with an area of constitutional law in the process of transformation. The 11th Circuit’s first decision in the case, issued in 2000, relied on Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision upholding Georgia’s felony sodomy law against constitutional attack, to hold that the sex toys law was not facially unconstitutional. At that time, the circuit remanded to Judge Smith to determine whether the law might be unconstitutional as applied. He determined that it was, but in its more recent decision, the 11th Circuit reversed again, asking Judge Smith to reconsider his ruling in light of Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court decision that overruled Bowers and struck down the Texas Homosexual Conduct Law as violative of liberty under the Due Process Clause. As part of that decision, however, the 11th Circuit rejected the argument that Lawrence had recognized or created a fundamental right of sexual privacy for adults under the Due Process Clause.

Click here to read more about Judge Smith’s opinion in “Alabama Judge Finally Concludes That Sex Toys Ban Must Stand,” beginning on the ninth page of the April 2006 edition of the Notes.

New York Law School Professor Arthur Leonard, the editor and chief author of Lesbian/Gay Law Notes, also wrote about District Judge Lynwood Smith’s opinion at his blog Leonard Link in a post which begins, “It seems that legislators in some states feel that it is the business of the state to establish a ‘moral code’ for all of us by outlawing the promotion and sale of ‘sexual devices’ that people might use for solo pleasure…”