Florence v. Shurtleff

(formerly The King's English v. Shurtleff) U.S. District Court for the District of Utah (No. 2:05CV00495 DB)

  1. Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Utah
  2. Media Coalition Press Release about the challenge.
  3. U.S. District Court Judge Dee Benson's order granting preliminary injunction
  4. U.S. Distirct Court Judge Dee Benson's ruling on defendants' motion to dismiss, November 29,2007
  5. Utah CLU and Media Coalition press release on Judge Benson's ruling, November 29, 2007
  6. State's response to motion for reconsideration
  7. State motion to lift injunction

Most recent news: Plaintiffs have filed interogatories and requests for production of documents.  The State responded to both, interrogatories and the request for documents.  Both responses were inadequate.  Plaintiffs will plan to have a conference with the Attorney General.

U.S. District Court Judge Benson denied plaintiffs' motion for reconsideration and affirmed his ruling that The Kings English and others did not have standing in the case.  The case will now be captioned Nathan Florence v. Shurtleff, after Florence, a Utah painter who paints, among other scenes, nudes.  The King's English and Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore remain a part of the case as members of ABFFE.  To date, the state has not amended the law during the legislative session to address the constitutional informities.

 

History:

On June 9, 2005, citing free speech and interstate commerce violations, a broadly-based group of Utah bookstores, artistic and informative websites, Internet service providers and national trade associations filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a Utah law meant to restrict children’s access to material on the Internet. The law would do so by creating a list of websites the Attorney General's office deems to be including harmful material, and, due to the nature of the blocking, ISPs would sometimes be required to restrict access to websites that are not included in the list. 

On August 25, 2006, U.S. District Court Judge Dee Benson issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law.

On November 29, 2007, Judge Benson ruled on the State of Utah's motion to dismiss the case for lack of standing. The judge found that most of the plaintiffs have standing to move ahead with the claims related to the Harmful to Minors Act. Media Coalition joined the Utah CLU to issue a press release about the order and opinion.

On July 28, 2008, Judge Benson heard the plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration. Attorneys for the plaintiffs asked the court to reconsider its previous dismissal of certain claims and parties. Benson denied the motion in all respects.

On April 15, 2009, plaintiffs filed interrogatories, requests to admit, and requests for production of documents.  On May 18, the deadline for all responses, the State responded to the request to admit, but did not respond to the interrogatories or request for documents. 

 

Plaintiffs in this case are The King’s English, Inc.; Sam Weller’s Zion Bookstore; Nathan Florence; W. Andrew McCullough; Computer Solutions International, Inc.; Mountain Wireless Utah, LLC; the Sexual Health Network, Inc., Utah Progressive Network Education Fund, Inc.; the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah; the Association of American Publishers; the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; the Freedom to Read Foundation; and the Publishers Marketing Association.
 

 

updated 4/2/08