NEW YORK, NY, April 24, 2008 – Six Oregon booksellers will join the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and a coalition of groups in filing a lawsuit in federal district court in Portland tomorrow challenging a new Oregon law that unconstitutionally restricts the display and sale of books and magazines that are protected by the First Amendment.  House Bill 2843 makes it a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail to allow a minor under 13 to view or purchase a “sexually explicit” work.  “We do not doubt the good intentions of the Oregon legislature,” ABFFE President Chris Finan said.  “But H.B. 2843 lacks the safeguards for booksellers that the U.S. Supreme Court has mandated in this kind of law.”

Finan said that booksellers are concerned that H.B. 2843 does not include a requirement that a book or magazine be judged as a whole in determining whether it is illegal; such a test may exempt works that contain only a few sexually explicit images or passages.  In addition, there is no exemption for material that has serious literary artistic, political or scientific value for minors.  Under H.B. 2843, a bookseller can be prosecuted for allowing a curious 12-year-old to examine a sex education book if it contains drawings depicting sexual conduct, even one that is written for minors.