Vague, unclear wording in a Texan photography law caused it to be deemed unconstitutional recently. Texas’ “anti-upskirting” law is meant for photographers to not be able to take photos of another person without their consent to “arouse or gratify the sexual desire of another person.” Sounds pretty clear, right? However, the Appeals Court shut down the law because, objectively, any photograph (or anything, for that matter) can cause arousal for somebody. For example, if I were to take a photo of somebody walking their dog and somebody who has a dog walking fetish saw my photos and began distributing that in their dog walking fetish forums, I could legally go to jail because of the innocent photo.

Judge Sharon Keller explains the court’s reasoning behind shutting down the law:

Protecting someone who appears in public from being the object of sexual thoughts seems to be the sort of ‘paternalistic interest in regulating the defendant’s mind’ that the First Amendment was designed to guard against.

We all agree that taking photos of people in a sexual nature without their consent is morally (and legally) wrong. However, as the bill currently stands, it’s too unclear to ratify. All that’s necessary is to rewrite the wording of the bill to pinpoint the exact problem.

[via PetaPixel]