Gloria Allred to West Palm Beach prosecutor: You really should go after Rush, you know

that statute is unconstitutional. it violates the equal protection of the laws clause because it only applies to women as a victim. by definition, a man cannot be a victim of it. it is probably ancient history and no prosecutions since the 30s…. but gloria allred doesn’t care about the law except as a tool for her political hack tendencies….

no prosecutor, except a far out lefty would touch that.

Dr. Demento on March 9, 2012 at 4:39 PM”

i nailed it: By a guy named Volokh,

“2. Beyond this, the Florida criminal statute, which explicitly applies only to accusations about women and not men, almost certainly violates the Equal Protection Clause doctrine that bans most forms of sex discrimination. (See, e.g., Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan (1982).) This doctrine has long been used to invalidate laws that ostensibly favor women but are based on, and perpetuate, sex-based norms of proper behavior; and at least two cases, Ivey v. State (Ala. 2001) and Rejent v. Liberation Pubs. (N.Y. App. Div. 1994), have specifically concluded that such sex-based rules in libel law are unconstitutional — here’s what Rejent said:

It is, as one commentator has noted, ‘quite blatantly sexist and discriminatory, and is based on outmoded assumptions about sexual behavior. Sex-based classifications very similar to the ‘unchastity of a woman’ rule have been struck down by the United States Supreme Court as violative of the equal protection clause…. The Restatement (Second) takes a laudable lead in this area, modifying the traditional rule to a sex-neutral standard that renders any imputation of ‘sexual misconduct’ by a man or woman slanderous per se.

And since I quite doubt that Florida courts would be willing to cure the discrimination by broadening the criminal law to cover accusations against men — courts in most states generally aren’t allowed to essentially criminalize behavior that the legislature hasn’t criminalized — I think the Florida statute would have to be struck down as an Equal Protection Clause violation, leaving it to the legislature to decide whether to reenact a sex-neutral statute. Such a sex-neutral statute would probably be considered a constitutional criminal libel statute if limited to knowing falsehoods;Garrison v. Louisiana (1964) suggests that such criminal libel statutes are constitutional if suitably limited, and I suspect that the focus on accusations of sexual impropriety would be constitutional despite R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), because it seems unlikely to be aimed at the suppression of ideas. But it would be up to the Florida Legislature to create such a sex-neutral statutes, and not to the Florida courts to broaden it. (For an extremely rare case where a court solved a constitutional problem with a criminal statute by broadening the criminal prohibition, see People v. Liberta (N.Y. 1984), a case that was driven by felt moral imperatives that are likely not to be present here.)”

Dr. Demento on March 10, 2012 at 1:09 PM

she has demonstrated that she has no legal acumen…..

and did some idiot give her a show where she plays a judge on tv?

Dr. Demento on March 10, 2012 at 2:16 PM