Texas Fixes Its Revenge Porn Law
Texas likely won't have to wait on the courts to fix its 4-year-old revenge porn law. Sunday afternoon, the Texas Senate voted unanimously to support a change to the law that attempts to protect third parties' free-speech rights while allowing the statute to retain its teeth.
"One out of every 25 individuals is impacted by revenge porn," El Paso state Rep. Mary Gonzalez said in April as she rolled out the bill on the House floor. "They deserve to have those protections, and we're trying to maintain that."
The state's 2014 law, one of the first of its kind in the country, forbids anyone from distributing images or video showing "a person's intimate parts exposed" or engaging in sexual contact without the person's knowledge or consent. A conviction under the law is punishable by up to a year in jail and $4,000 fine.
Since becoming law in 2015, Texas' revenge porn law has been subject to several challenges from free speech advocates. In April 2018, East Texas' 12th Court of Appeals ruled that the law violated the First Amendment in response to a challenge filed by an East Texas man arrested on revenge porn charges.
Read more: https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-passes-revenge-porn-fix-11668838