[Ppnews] Justice Department Criticizes Louisiana "Crime Against Nature" Law

[Political Prisoner News]

Speaking Out Against Louisiana's "Crime Against Nature" Law
Justice Department Report, Released Today, Calls Law Discriminatory
By Jordan Flaherty
<http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com/2011/03/justice-department-report-released.html>http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com/2011/03/justice-department-report-released.html
An earlier version of this article originally appeared on ColorLines.com

Eve is a transgender woman living in rural 
southern Louisiana. She was molested as a child 
and left home as a teenager. Homeless and alone, 
she was forced to trade sex for survival. While 
still a teenager, she was arrested and charged 
with a Crime Against Nature, an archaic Louisiana 
law originally designed to penalize sex acts 
associated with gays and lesbians.

Now Eve is one of nine plaintiffs fighting the 
law in a federal civil rights complaint that 
advocates hope will finally put this official discrimination to an end.

This legal action comes in the context of 
increased scrutiny from the federal government 
over the conduct of the New Orleans Police 
Department. A US Justice Department investigation 
of the NOPD, released today, found "reasonable 
cause to believe that patterns and practices of 
unconstitutional conduct and/or violations of 
federal law occurred in several areas," including 
"racial and ethnic profiling and lesbian, gay, 
bi-sexual and transgender (LGBT) discrimination." 
The report specifically mentioned Louisiana's 
Crime Against Nature law, calling it "a statute 
whose history reflects anti-LGBT sentiment." The 
report also concluded that investigators "found 
reasonable cause to believe that NOPD practices 
lead to discriminatory treatment of LGBT individuals."

Punishing Women

Eve, who asked that her real name and age remain 
confidential, spent two years in prison. During 
her time behind bars she was raped and contracted 
HIV. Upon release, she was forced to register in 
the state’s sex offender database. The words “sex 
offender” now appear on her driver’s license. “I 
have tried desperately to change my life,” she 
says, but her status on the database stands in 
the way of housing and other programs. “When I 
present my ID for anything,” she says, “the 
assumption is that you’re a child molester or a 
rapist. The discrimination is just ongoing and ongoing.”

Eve was penalized under Louisiana’s 205-year-old 
Crime Against Nature statute, a blatantly 
discriminatory law that legislators have 
maneuvered to keep on the state’s books for the 
purpose of turning sex workers into felons. As 
enforced, the law specifically singles out oral 
and anal sex for greater punishment for those 
arrested for prostitution, including requiring 
those convicted to register as sex offenders in a 
public database. Advocates say the law has 
further isolated and targeted poor women of 
color, transgender women, and especially those 
who are forced to trade sex for food or a place to sleep at night.

In 2003, the Supreme Court outlawed sodomy laws 
with its decision in Lawrence v. Texas. That 
ruling should have invalidated Louisiana’s law 
entirely. Instead, the state has chosen to only 
enforce the portion of the law that concerns 
“solicitation” of a crime against nature. The 
decision on whether to charge accused sex workers 
with a felony instead of Louisiana’s misdemeanor 
prostitution law is left entirely in the hands of police and prosecutors.

“This leaves the door wide open to discriminatory 
enforcement targeting poor black women, 
transgender women, and gay men for a charge that 
carries much harsher penalties,” says police 
misconduct attorney and organizer Andrea J. 
Ritchie, a co-counsel in a new federal lawsuit challenging the statute.

A media-fueled national panic about child 
molesters has brought sex offender registries to 
every state. But advocates warn that, across the 
U.S., these registries have been used 
disproportionately against African Americans and 
other communities of color, and are often used 
for purposes outside of their original intent. 
Louisiana, however, is the only state in the U.S. 
that requires people who have been convicted of 
crimes that do not involve minors or sexual 
violence to register as sex offenders.

In 1994, Congress passed Megan’s Law, also known 
as the Wetterling Act, which mandated that states 
create systems for registering sex offenders. The 
act was amended in 1996 to require public 
disclosure of the names on the registries and 
again in 2006 to require sex offenders stay in 
the public registry for at least 15 years.

Megan’s Law was clearly not targeted at 
prostitution. However, Louisiana lawmakers opted 
to apply the registry to the crimes against 
nature statute as well, and at that moment 
started down the path to a new level of 
punishment for sex work. “This archaic law is 
being used to mark people with modern day scarlet 
letter,” says attorney Alexis Agathocleus of the 
Center for Constitutional Rights, another party in the lawsuit.

People convicted under the Louisiana law must 
carry a state ID with the words “sex offender” 
printed below their name. If they have to 
evacuate because of a hurricane, they must stay 
in a special shelter for sex offenders that has 
no separate facilities for men and women. They 
have to pay a $60 annual registration fee, in 
addition to $250 to $750 to print and mail 
postcards to their neighbors every time they 
move. The post cards must show their names and 
addresses, and often they are required to include 
a photo. Failing to register and pay the fees, a 
separate crime, can carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.

Women and men on the registry will also find 
their names, addresses, and convictions printed 
in the newspaper and published in an online sex 
offender database. The same information is also 
displayed at public sites like schools and 
community centers. Women—including one mother of 
three—have complained that because of their 
appearance on the registry, they have had men 
come to their homes demanding sex. A plaintiff in 
the suit had rocks thrown at her by neighbors. 
“This has forced me to live in poverty, be on 
food stamps and welfare,” explains a man who was 
on the list. “I’ve never done that before.”

In Orleans Parish, 292 people are on the registry 
for selling sex, versus 85 people convicted of 
forcible rape and 78 convicted of “indecent 
behavior with juveniles.” Almost 40 percent of 
those registered in Orleans Parish are there 
solely because they were accused of offering anal 
or oral sex for money. Seventy-five percent of 
those on the database for Crime Against Nature 
are women, and 80 percent are African American. 
Evidence gathered by advocates suggests a majority are poor or indigent.

Legal advocates credit on-the-ground organizing 
and the advocacy of the group Women With A Vision 
(WWAV) for making them aware of this 
discriminatory law. WWAV, a 20-year-old New 
Orleans-based organization, provides health care 
and other services to women involved in survival 
sex work. “Many of these women are survivors of 
rape and domestic violence themselves,” says WWAV 
executive director Deon Haywood. “Yet they are being treated as predators.”

Plaintiffs Tell Their Stories

Ian, another plaintiff in the legal challenge to 
the Crime Against Nature statute, was homeless 
from the age of 13, and began trading sex for 
survival. When an undercover officer approached 
him and asked him for sex, Ian asked for money. 
“All I said was $50,” he says, “And they put me away for four years.”

In prison, Ian was raped by a correction officer 
and by other prisoners, and like Eve, he 
contracted HIV. Now, he says, potential employers 
see the words “sex offender” written on his ID 
and no one will hire him. “Do I deserve to be 
punished any more than I’ve already been 
punished?” he asks. “I was 13 years old. That’s 
the only way I knew how to survive.”

Hiroke, a New Orleans resident and another 
plaintiff in the suit, spoke on a call set up by 
advocates. “I had just graduated from high school 
and was just coming out as transgender,” she 
says. Hiroke was arrested and convicted while 
still a teenager. As she began to describe her 
experience, Hiroke’s voice began to shake. “I was 
being held with men in jail at the time
” she 
began. Then there was silence on the line. 
Holding back tears, she then apologized for being unable to continue.

The Louisiana legislature recently passed a 
reform of the Crime Against Nature statute, but 
for the vast majority of those affected, the 
change makes little to no difference. Although 
the new law takes away the registration component 
for a first conviction, a second conviction 
requires 15 years on the registry, and up to five 
years imprisonment. A third conviction mandates a 
lifetime on the registry. More than 538 men and 
women remain on the registry because they were 
convicted of offering anal or oral sex, with more added almost every day.

The legal challenge to the Crime Against Nature 
law, called Doe v. Jindal, has been filed in 
Louisiana’s US District Court Eastern District on 
behalf of nine anonymous plaintiffs. It was filed 
by the Center for Constitutional Rights, attorney 
Andrea J. Ritchie, and the Law Clinic at Loyola 
University New Orleans College of Law. The 
anonymous plaintiffs include a grandmother, a 
mother of four, three transgender women, and a 
man, all of whom have been required to register 
as sex offenders from 15 years to life as a 
result of their convictions for the solicitation of oral sex for money.
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist and staffer with 
the Louisiana Justice Institute. His 
award-winning reporting from the Gulf Coast has 
been featured in a range of outlets including the 
New York Times, Mother Jones, and Argentina's 
Clarin newspaper. He has produced news segments 
for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now, and 
appeared as a guest on CNN Morning, Anderson 
Cooper 360, and Keep Hope Alive with the Reverend 
Jesse Jackson. His new book is FLOODLINES: 
Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena 
Six. He can be reached at 
<mailto:neworleans at leftturn.org>neworleans at leftturn.org, 
and more information about Floodlines can be 
found at <http://floodlines.org>floodlines.org. 
For speaking engagements, see 
<http://communityandresistance.wordpress.com.>communityandresistance.wordpress.com.

A version of this article originally appeared on ColorLines.com
<http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/03/federal_civil_rights_suit_challenges_louisianas_felony_sex_work_law.html>http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/03/federal_civil_rights_suit_challenges_louisianas_felony_sex_work_law.html


Organizations and Resources Mentioned in Article:
Women With A Vision
<http://wwav-no.org/>http://wwav-no.org/

Andrea J. Ritchie, Esq

<http://www.queerinjustice.com/>http://www.queerinjustice.com/

Loyola Law Clinic

<http://www.loyno.edu/lawclinic/>http://www.loyno.edu/lawclinic/

Center for Constitutional Rights

<http://www.ccrjustice.org>http://www.ccrjustice.org

Doe v. Jindal

<http://www.ccrjustice.org/crime-against-nature>http://www.ccrjustice.org/crime-against-nature

US Justice Department Investigation of the NOPD:

<http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/nopd.php>www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/nopd.php


Recent Reporting by Jordan Flaherty:
Her Crime? Sex Work in New Orleans:

<http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=673>http://www.colorlines.com/archives/2010/01/her_crime_sex_work_in_new_orleans.html<http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=673>

New Orleans’ Police Problem:

<http://www.theroot.com/views/new-orleans-police-problem>http://www.theroot.com/views/new-orleans-police-problem
Fears of Cultural Extinction on Louisiana's Gulf Coast:
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/fears-of-cultural-extinct_b_612626.html>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/fears-of-cultural-extinct_b_612626.html
Jena Sheriff Seeks Revenge for Civil Rights Protests:
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/jena-sheriff-seeks-reveng_b_575413.html>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/jena-sheriff-seeks-reveng_b_575413.html
New Complaints of Police Violence in New Orleans:
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/new-complaints-of-police_b_544335.html>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/new-complaints-of-police_b_544335.html
<http://www.theroot.com/views/new-orleans-real-city-never-sleeps>
One Year After Haiti Earthquake, Corporations Profit While People Suffer:

<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/flaherty120111.html>http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/flaherty120111.html


Other Resources:

Louisiana Justice Institute: 
<http://www.louisianajusticeinstitute.org/>http://www.louisianajusticeinstitute.org 

Justice Roars: 
<http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com/>http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com 

This is a low-volume email list for Jordan 
Flaherty's articles and updates from New Orleans 
and the Gulf Coast.  To subscribe, email 
jordanhurricane-subscribe at lists.riseup.net.  To 
unsubscribe, email jordanhurricane-unsubscribe at lists.riseup.net.



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