Reliable Consultants, Inc. v. Earle

REAVLEY, Circuit Judge:

This case assesses the constitutionality of a Texas statute making it a crime to promote or sell sexual devices. The district court upheld the statute’s constitutionality and granted the State’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. We reverse the judgment and hold that the statute has provisions that violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

I. The Statute

The forerunner of Texas’s obscenity statute was enacted in 1973 and had the modest goal of prohibiting “obscene material.”1 Six years later, the legislature redefined “obscene material” so…