Groups to Challenge Disparate Punishment Under Louisiana’s Crime Against Nature Law

From our friends at Women With A Vision and Center for Constitutional Rights:
Attorneys, Advocates Say Antiquated Law Unfairly Brands Poor Women and LGBT People with Scarlet Letter, Disproportionately Affects African Americans

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Andrea J. Ritchie, Esq., and the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, Law Clinic will file a federal civil rights complaint in the United States District Court Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 on behalf of nine anonymous plaintiffs. The case challenges the continuing use of Louisiana’s 200 year-old Crime Against Nature statute to brand people who solicit oral and anal sex – sex acts historically associated with homosexuality – as sex offenders, while a conviction under Louisiana’s prostitution statute triggers no such requirement. The groups will hold a press conference at the New Orleans federal courthouse, 500 Poydras St, at 10:00am CST.

Among those in attendance will be Bill Quigley, CCR Legal Director; Alexis Agathocleous, CCR Staff Attorney; Andrea J. Ritchie, Esq., private police misconduct attorney and co-author of Queer Injustice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States; Davida Finger, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, Law Clinic; Deon Haywood, Women With a Vision Executive Director; Wes Ware, Lead Youth Advocate, Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana; Shana Griffin, Women's Health and Justice Initiative.