Condoms in Porn Revisited

A while ago I wrote about the proposed mandate in California that would make porn actors in wear condoms in LA County. One of the questions I’d asked was how that would impact the porn industry, with one potential outcome being that maybe they simply wouldn’t film porn in that county anymore.

Turns out to be pretty much what they decided to do. “We need to wear condoms if we’re going to film in this county? Then we’ll film somewhere else!” An article I read from HuffPo indicated that a typical year would see up to 500 permits filed from adult-film studios, versus a total of 24 this year. That’s a pretty hard number to ignore: less than 5% of the number of permits that usually would have been filed.

Studios are either bringing their crews a bit further to do their filming, or they’re hiring performers in other jurisdictions like Florida that don’t have the condom requirements.

So all’s well that ends well, right? Porn still gets made, nothing really changes? I mean, sure, it’s mentioned in that HuffPo piece that the porn producers would prefer to film in L.A. because it looks nicer and it’s cheaper, but they’ll get by.

But then it gets a bit more strange – at least to me. You see, the organization that originally pushed for the condom law in California was the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, or AHF, but that wasn’t the war, for them, it was just the first battle. Now they’re setting their sights on other jurisdictions.

In another HuffPo piece we’re told about a deal between a couple of porn production companies, one in California and one in Florida. The Californian company outsourced some porn acting work to the Florida company, so that the filming could be done in Florida where there are no condom laws on the books. Which is all well and good, it gets around that California law, but now AHF is trying to go after the Florida porn production company, claiming that they’re taking health risks. In effect, they want to take their victory from California and repeat it in other jurisdictions; this seems to be their way of trying to get their foot in the door.

Then again, maybe they should continue to wage the war on the home front, because it turns out that the law in California may not be enforceable as it currently stands. A third HuffPo piece tells us why:

• When the mandate was first passed Vivid Entertainment filed suit against the county, claiming that it violated their freedom of expression.
• Then in August a judge ruled that some parts of the mandate are unconstitutional. Although he did uphold the essentials, requiring condom use, he said that other parts of the law, including how it is enforced, were unconstitutional.
• So Vivid appealed
• And then the county decided not to defend the appeal

Unfortunately I’m not a lawyer, so I have no idea what happens next. Does that mean Vivid automatically wins the appeal? Or does the judge just make up his own mind, without the lawyers for the county arguing their case? (I’d guess the former rather than the latter, but it’s just a guess.)

If there’s one lesson to take away from all of this, it’s this: The Huffington Post has a section devoted entirely to news about porn!