"Congress shall make no law..."

A group of Indiana booksellers last week signed and sent a letter to Governor Mitch Daniels, protesting a new law that requires stores to pay a $250 fee and register with the secretary of state before selling sexually explicit material. The law goes into effect July 1 and would apply only to business that open after that date. Details can be found in this Indiana Star story.

It seems likely that this law will be challenged on First Amendment grounds. Since it has no zoning provision -- it's not about excluding sellers of explicit material from certain areas, such as school or church zones -- its fee provision appears in effect to be a license to publish, much as poll taxes (struck down as unconstitutional) were in effect licenses to vote.

Also, booksellers complain of the vagueness of the statutory definitions, which would include material that "appeals to prurient interest in sex of minors," or material "when considered as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors."

There are lots of people in southern Indiana who would include sex education material and James Joyce's "Ulysses" in the categories that should be licensed.