Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance - Causes For Action

Each version of the ordinance provided different causes for action under which women could file sex discrimination suits related to pornography.

The original version of the ordinance passed in Minneapolis, the Indianapolis ordinance, and the proposed Cambridge ordinance each recognized four causes for action that could justify a sex discrimination suit:

• Trafficking in pornography, defined as the production, sale, exhibition, or distribution of pornographic materials. Making pornography available for study in government-funded public libraries and public or private university libraries was exempted from being considered discrimination by trafficking. Any woman could claim a cause for action against the trafficker(s) as a woman acting against the subordination of women. Men or transsexuals who alleged injury by pornography in the way that women are injured by it could also sue.
• Coercion into pornographic performances. Any person coerced, intimidated, or fraudulently induced into pornography could sue the maker(s), seller(s), exhibitor(s), or distributor(s), both for damages and to have the product or products of the performances eliminated from public view. The law stated that a number of specific factors, including past sexual history, other involvement in prostitution or pornography, the appearance of cooperation during the performance, or payment for the performance, could not by used (by themselves, without further evidence) as evidence against a claim of coercion.
• Forcing pornography on a person in a home, workplace, school, or public place. Any person who has pornography forced on her or him could sue the perpetrator and the institution.
• Assault or physical attack due to pornography. The victim of an assault, physical attack, or injury "directly caused by specific pornography" could seek damages from the maker(s), distributor(s), seller(s), and/or exhibitor(s) of the pornography, and an injunction against the further exhibition, distribution, or sale of that specific pornography.

The Model Ordinance that Dworkin and MacKinnon advocated in Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality (1988), and the version of the ordinance passed in Bellingham, Washington the same year, added a fifth cause of action in addition to these four:

• Defamation through pornography, defined as defaming any person (including public figures) through the unauthorized use of their proper name, image, or recognizable personal likeness in pornography, and allowing for authorization, if given, to be revoked in writing at any time prior to the publication of the pornography.