As far as we know, which is only back to the 1860s on one side of the family and the early 1900s on the other, my brother Brendan and I are the only lawyers in our family. The wrinkle in this is that our mother, Bonnie Walsh, appeared in court as a quasi-lawyer or something when we were in grade school. Even now looking at a resulting court opinion, I’m not 100% sure in what capacity she argued in court. But her voice was heard and she wasn’t a party or a witness or a lawyer. She was heard as a concerned citizen and spokesperson for an ad hoc organization called Parents for Decency through Law.
The core of this group consisted of six moms from a playgroup. They were unhappy with a kids’ store in the Nanuet Mall called Happy Times Store. In addition to featuring teddy bears and toys, this store also sold sexually explicit greeting cards that were publicly displayed on a rack in the store. After complaints to the store manager went nowhere, the parents organized. They conducted a protest in the mall outside the store. That did not lead to removal of the cards so they complained to the police, contending that the public display of the cards violated NY Penal Law § 245.11. The Rockland County District Attorney, Kenneth Gribetz, instructed the police not to enforce the law against this display in the Happy Times Store. So the parents went to the Clarkstown Town Board and urged the Board to pass a resolution urging the DA to enforce the law. The Board passed such a resolution. The DA was not happy about this and still wouldn’t enforce the law. I’m a little foggy on the details of what happened next. (I was just 9 or 10 years old.) Somehow a criminal information ended up in the Clarkstown Town Court courtroom of Judge William Kelly. The DA moved to dismiss the information. In a fairly long opinion, Judge Kelly dismissed (seemingly reluctantly) as to all but one of the cards. Here’s how the opinion opens:
The People have moved this court to dismiss the charge of public display of offensive sexual material (Penal Law § 245.11) pending against the defendant on the ground that the offensive materials do not fall within the proscription of the statute as a matter of law.
A large group of concerned parents, members of an ad hoc organization called “Parents for Decency Through Law”, rigorously oppose the motion to dismiss. They attended the initial court hearing and have submitted numerous exhibits and legal memoranda to the court along with 170 letters of complaint from parents and local organizations opposed to the public display of the “cards” in question which they contend are sexually explicit and violative of the statute which prohibits the unrestricted public display of sexually offensive material as defined in Penal Law § 245.10.
Keeping the charge alive for just one card was enough to maintain pressure on the store (and the mall owners). The store owner ultimately agreed with the mall owners that he would remove the cards. Chalk up a win for Parents Through Decency for Law.