## Facts

- A Pennsylvania junior high principal confiscated students’ cell phones and found digital photos of partially clothed female students, including girls in bras and one girl in a towel after a shower.
- School officials referred the matter to the Wyoming County District Attorney, who characterized the images as “sexting” and treated them as potential child pornography under Pennsylvania law.
- The District Attorney warned parents that the minors could face felony child-pornography charges (boys for possession; girls as producers or accomplices) unless they accepted an “informal adjustment.”
- The “informal adjustment” required a year of pre-adjudication probation, participation in a multi-month sexuality/behavior program with explicit moral content, and an essay by the girls explaining why their actions were wrong.
- Most families accepted; three girls and their parents refused, asserting the photos were non-sexual and did not meet the statutory definition of child pornography and that the girls did not transmit the images.
- The parents filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action seeking a temporary restraining order (TRO) and other relief to prevent threatened juvenile proceedings tied to the photos.

## Issues

1. Whether threatening felony child-pornography charges to coerce participation in a moral “re-education” program and a written admission of wrongdoing likely violates the First Amendment (compelled speech and related coercion).
2. Whether conditioning the avoidance of prosecution on parents’ agreement to the program likely infringes parents’ Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process right to direct their children’s upbringing.
3. Whether the prosecutor showed a sufficient legal basis under Pennsylvania child-pornography law to charge the minor girls based on the images at issue, supporting threatened delinquency proceedings.
4. Whether the TRO factors (likelihood of success, irreparable harm, balance of hardships, public interest) favored injunctive relief.

## Decision

- The district court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a TRO.
- The court enjoined the District Attorney from initiating or threatening juvenile delinquency proceedings against the minor plaintiffs based on the photographs, pending further proceedings.
- The court found plaintiffs showed a reasonable likelihood of success on First Amendment and parental substantive due process claims.
- The court found irreparable harm from threatened constitutional injury and the serious consequences associated with delinquency proceedings.
- The balance of hardships favored plaintiffs, and the public interest favored protecting constitutional rights and limiting coercive use of prosecutorial power.

## Legal Principles

- A prosecutor must have a clear legal basis before using child-pornography statutes to pursue or threaten charges based on non-sexual, partially clothed images of minors.
- Government may not coerce minors into adopting or expressing an official moral judgment—such as requiring essays admitting wrongdoing—as a condition of avoiding criminal prosecution; compelled ideological or moral speech raises First Amendment concerns.
- Parents have a protected liberty interest under the Fourteenth Amendment to direct their children’s upbringing and moral education; coercive conditions that force parental acquiescence under threat of severe prosecution can violate substantive due process.
- In the TRO context, credible threats to First Amendment freedoms and imminent delinquency proceedings can constitute irreparable harm supporting immediate injunctive relief.

## Conclusion

The court temporarily barred the District Attorney from threatening or pursuing juvenile charges tied to the photos, concluding that plaintiffs were likely to prove the threatened prosecution lacked a clear statutory basis and that leveraging felony threats to compel a moral program and written contrition impermissibly burdened minors’ First Amendment rights and parents’ due process rights.


Miller v. Skumanick, 605 F. Supp. 2d 634 (M.D. Pa. 2009)