The State - News from Aug. 13, 1986

Moral Majority evangelist Jerry Falwell had a legal right to use sexually explicit reprints from Hustler magazine in a campaign to raise more than $700,000 for a Virginia libel action against the magazine and publisher Larry Flynt, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in San Francisco. The three-judge panel upheld 2-1 a lower court decision that Falwell did not infringe on a copyright by mailing copies of a parody that Hustler printed about the evangelist. Last week, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., affirmed a $200,000 damage award to Falwell by a jury that found Hustler had caused Falwell severe emotional distress.