For Immediate Release

Contact: Judith Platt/Deidre Huntington

Ph: 202-220-4551/202-220-4550

Publishers Join in Suing Over Indiana Retailer Registration Law

Washington, DC, May 8, 2008:  The Association of American Publishers has joined with booksellers, librarians, civil liberties groups and a host of others in challenging a new state law that tramples on the First Amendment rights of booksellers and other retailers in Indiana.  The plaintiffs, including ABFFE, the Freedom to Read Foundation, and other members of Media Coalition, as well as independent booksellers, the Indiana ACLU, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, filed suit yesterday in federal district court in Indianapolis and are seeking an injunction barring enforcement of the statute, which goes into effect July 1.

The new law requires any retailer who creates a new establishment or relocates an existing one after July 1 and who sells, or intends to sell, any “sexually explicit material,” to register with the Indiana Secretary of State as an “adult” business and to pay a $250 registration fee. Registration information would be passed along for monitoring by local governments, in effect creating a blacklist of “adult” retailers.  The statutory language is so broad and ambiguous that bookstores carrying art and photography books, sex and health education materials, romance novels and even classic fiction would be caught up in the “adult” business registry. 

AAP President and CEO Pat Schroeder said that “Forcing bookstores to register with the government based on the content of the books they sell--and to pay $250 for the privilege-- is abhorrent.  It runs contrary to every understanding of our First Amendment rights.  We hope the court acts quickly in granting the request for an injunction.”

The complaint can be found online at: http://www.mediacoalition.org/legal/Big%20Hat%20Books%20v%20Prosecutors/Complaint5.7.08.pdf

The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry. AAP’s approximately 300 members include most of the major commercial book publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies. AAP members publish hardcover and paperback books in every field, educational materials for the elementary, secondary, post-secondary and professional markets, scholarly journals, computer software and electronic products and services.  The Association represents an industry whose very existence depends upon the free exercise of rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

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