Ferguson Bill Aimed at Adult News Racks Fails

Worried about a possible infringement on First Amendment guarantees of free speech, a Senate committee on Tuesday moved to bury a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) that would all but ban the sale of sexually explicit tabloids from sidewalk news racks.

The intent of the measure was to keep graphic pornography out of the hands of minors, whom Ferguson and others claimed have used their school lunch money to buy the tabloids from the stands found near doughnut shops, post offices and grocery stores in places such as Huntington Beach and Corona del Mar.

Backed by Los Angeles County and the state’s PTA, Ferguson’s bill would curtail the sale of sex-related newspapers by requiring those showing sex acts or lewd depictions of genitalia to post adult supervisors at the coin-operated stands--an economic burden designed to drive the publications out of business or into private establishments such as adult bookstores.

The measure gained surprising support from some civil libertarians in the Assembly and seemed to be gaining behind-the-scenes momentum on the Senate side before Tuesday’s hearing.

But the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 5-4 to stop the Ferguson bill by holding onto it for interim study, a move that many acknowledged was the death knell for the measure this year.

“At least it’s gone for the time being,” said Margaret Pena, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed the bill. “You’ve seen the proponents on the bill. They’ll be here next year and the year after that.”

In voting to hold onto the bill, Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) cited possible First Amendment problems with the way it tried to restrict the sale of the tabloids. Instead of concentrating on the “time, place and manner” of the news rack sales, the measure instead dwelt on the contents of the publications, he said.

“I’m sympathetic to families trying to inculcate values that they believe in their children,” said Lockyer. “I’m not sure that state intervention in people’s lives is the way to accomplish that.”

“It probably means that a family has already failed when it hasn’t taught the kid before: ‘This is junk. You’re not interested in that,’ ” he said. “And if they (minors) have an interest in it, they’re going to find a way to get it.”

Ferguson, however, said his measure was aimed at relocating the sale of the explicit magazines, not regulating their contents. He said state laws already ban the sale of such sex-related tabloids near schools and parks.

“It might be more obvious to them if there’s a loophole in the law that allowed liquor, whiskey, to be sold from a vending machine from which they (minors) had access,” Ferguson said. “They would quickly see that that’s a loophole and they would do away with it.”

Ferguson also said Tuesday’s vote was a “shocking surprise” because he had been led to believe by some senators that they would be voting for his bill. Although he declined to name names, he added: “I’m disappointed by the Los Angeles vote.”

Among those voting to shelve the bill were President Pro Tempore David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) and Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles). Others were Lockyer, Milton Marks (D-San Francisco) and Barry Keene (D-Benicia).

After the hearing, Ferguson said he received a telephone call from a representative of Catholic Archbishop Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, whose office has decided to “try to intercede” with Roberti and Torres to switch their votes and unearth the proposal before the end of the legislative session on Aug. 31.

Ferguson’s effort is his third since 1987, and is follow-up legislation to his 1988 bill that prohibited the sex-related newspapers from putting “harmful matter” on their covers to spur news rack sales.

Senators voting to approve Ferguson’s bill were Ed Davis (R-Valencia); Robert Presley (D-Riverside), Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim) and John Doolittle (R-Rocklin).