WASHINGTON, D.C. - The dramatic walk up the Supreme Court steps is part of a documentary film that is being produced about her nearly decade-long struggle to overturn Alabama's "obscene device" law.

Adult retailer Sherri Williams ascended the steps of the United States Supreme Court building at 1 p.m. this past Monday to deliver to the court clerk a copy of her petition for certiorari, asking the high court to rule on whether the Alabama law prohibiting the sale of vibrators for the purpose of sexual stimulation is constitutional.

According to Williams, Reed Lee, a First Amendment attorney and board member of the Free Speech Coalition, had discussed with her the possibility of the Coalition writing an amicus brief on her behalf, and Lee and Wilcox will be finalizing that offer in the near future, she said.

Williams also said she received a call from the D.C. park police to ask if she was planning to call for any sort of demonstration in support of her petition, but she assured them that it would just be her, some reporters and her film crew.

"Wouldn't it be funny, though, if a bunch of women came out here and used their vibrators to have orgasms on the steps of the Supreme Court building?" she joked.

Williams is contesting an Alabama law that prohibits the sale of vibrators. The relevant statute bans any "device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs."

Williams has fought the Alabama statute since it became law in 1998.

By MARK KERNES

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - Despite the fact that there are no recorded deaths due to excessive vibrator use in the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court nonetheless refused, without comment, to accept a petition for certiorari filed on behalf of Alabama retailer Sherri Williams and several others, appealing a decision by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals which remanded Williams' suit to the federal district court for reconsideration.

"This case is not, as the majority's demeaning and dismissive analysis suggests, about sex or about sexual devices," wrote dissenting Judge Rosemary Barkett. "It is about the tradition of American citizens from the inception of our democracy to value the constitutionally protected right to be left alone in the privacy of their bedrooms and personal relationships."

That's Williams' take on the issue as well. "A lot of people still believe that this case is only about overturning the sex-toy law in Alabama, but it's not," Williams told AVN.com. "Even though sex toys was the reason we're in court, the basis which we are using to overturn this law is 100 percent based on the right to sexual privacy.

As for Sherri Williams, while the rejection by the Supreme Court is "depressing," and she fears that the current injunction against Alabama enforcing its obscene device statute against her may be lifted in upcoming legal proceedings, she's currently turning much of her attention to her newest business, a smoking lounge come adult video store. '"In all my years of being in business, I never carried videos. But they're now an economic necessity, and because society has come around to accept it more so, I have to realize that perhaps my beliefs are somewhat old school. The adult videos pay the rent."

I am calling my new store 'Hipocratease,' mainly because of the hypocrisy of my life: I set out to help women by selling toys and the government told me I can only sell porn."

excerpted from:
"High Court Bounces Alabama Sex Toy Case."
By MARK KERNES
© avn.com May 8, 2007