On Monday (December 20th), an appeals court blocked a district attorney in Texas from going ahead with charges of child porn against Netflix for their streaming of the French film Cuties.
5th Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a 3-0 ruling upholding an injunction that placed the ongoing prosecution on a permanent hold. Netflix had released the controversial film, containing a teen dance troupe, back in September 2020.
Tyler County, Texas District Attorney Lucas Babin indicted the streaming company for “promotion of lewd visual material depicting a child,” even though the film does not feature any sex scenes.
Netflix followed up by taking the case to a federal court, claiming that Babin had acted in bad faith. A federal judge said in November 2022 that he was “unconvinced that Cuties contains child pornography.”
“Netflix has shown at this stage that it has been subjected to a bad-faith prosecution, an injury we have already deemed ‘irreparable,'” wrote Judge Don R. Willett following the end of the case.
Willett added, “The balance of equities also favors Netflix. It has an obvious interest in the continued exercise of its First Amendment rights, and the State has no legitimate interest in a bad-faith prosecution.”
Check out the trailer for Cuties below.
