LOS ANGELES (October 8, 2013)⎯AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) expressed its frustration and disappointment today with Los Angeles County officials for their decision to abdicate responsibility to defend a legal challenge to Measure B, the Los Angeles County Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act, which LA County voters passed with an overwhelming 57% to 43% margin last November. Steve Hirsch’s porn company, Vivid Entertainment, filed a lawsuit challenging the law, which requires adult film performers to use condoms in all porn productions filmed anywhere in Los Angeles County.
In a single sentence letter dated October 7, private legal counsel for LA County informed the Federal Court Clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, that LA County has chosen “…not to file an answering brief…due on October 18, 2013,” in the case Vivid Entertainment, LLC, et. Al., vs. Jonathan Fielding, et. Al., No. 13-56445.
County officials had previously declined to defend the law citing challenges by Vivid as to the constitutionality of the law on First Amendment grounds; however, in August, U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson ruled that Measure B’s requirement that performers use condoms in adult film productions was constitutional.
“It is a sad day when Dr. Jonathan Fielding and other L.A. County bureaucrats are unwilling or unable to defend a fairly straightforward law protecting the health and safety of adult film performers working in the industry in Los Angeles County,” said AHF president Michael Weinstein, who was one of the five individuals affiliated with AHF who were the official proponents of Measure B. “Despite Judge Pregerson’s ruling that the condom requirement is, in fact, constitutional, County officials are now cherry picking which laws to enforce. This should be a huge embarrassment to the County, but as we’ve seen before, with little to no little accountability, they have no shame whatsoever.”