AIDS Healthcare Foundation:
In response to AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s (AHF) legal petition for a writ of mandate to compel Los Angeles County’s Department of Public Health to fight the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in the porn industry, County attorneys have filed an eye-popping demurrer that shows the County’s complete disregard for young people working as performers in the $13 billion porn industry as well as revealing a strikingly blasé attitude by County officials toward potential County-wide general public health ramifications of serious infectious diseases, including transmission of several debilitating sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.
The County’s legal motion was filed last week in response to AHF’s July 16th legal petition for a writ of mandate against the County’s Public Health Department on the ‘condoms in porn’ issue. (NOTE: AHF separately filed workplace safety complaints late last week with Cal/OSHA—California’s Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health—the state’s health and safety regulatory and watchdog organization, asserting that 16 production companies endangered its workers in nearly 60 condom-less adult films they produced, shot and distributed. Those complaints remain under review by state health and safety officials.).
“We knew that Los Angeles County didn't care about young people who appear in porn, we just didn't think they were actually stupid enough to say so in print, as they did in their legal response to our petition for a writ of mandate to require the County’s Department of Public Health to enforce condom use in the production of porn,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “The County should be ashamed of its actions—and the attitude represented in its legal response—to the industry-specific and general public health concerns raised in our legal petition.”
“To County health officials, I simply ask what rises to the level of a public health concern, either for these individual at-risk actors working in the industry or for the greater Los Angeles public-at-large?” asked Weinstein, adding, “There is no firewall between porn performers and the general public.”
“We are asking that Los Angles County lawyers and public health officials enforce various laws regarding public health and that they take concrete action to combat an outbreak of communicable diseases within a known population—which County officials could do by requiring condom use on adult film sets,” said Brian Chase, Assistant General Counsel for AHF.
The lawsuit was filed in Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles (Case No.: BS121665), Thursday, July 16th and seeks a Writ of Mandate “compelling the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to discharge its ministerial and non-discretionary statutory duty to combat an acknowledged epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases stemming from production of hardcore pornography in Los Angeles County.”