ST. MARTINVILLE, La. – The owner of an adult video store charged in December for selling pornography is challenging the state’s obscenity law. Emmette Jacob Jr., owner of Le Video Store, was one of two St. Martin Parish video store owners charged with obscenity for selling illicit pornography.

In court documents filed this week Jacob’s attorneys argue that the charges should be dropped because the state’s obscenity law is too broad and too vague to pass constitutional muster.

A court hearing is set for June 24. Both video stores have remained open while the charges are pending.

“If I had any doubt in my mind about the constitutionality of that statute, I never would have charged these individuals,” said St. Martin Parish prosecutor Chester Cedars.

Jacob’s lawyers are attacking the law’s “community standards” test, which are guidelines that determine what is illegal obscenity. The test, drawn from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, defines as obscenity anything that the “average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find appeals to a base interest and has no artistic, political or scientific value.

The test is flawed in Louisiana because the state does not specify which community will define those standards, said J.D. Obenberger, one of Jacob’s attorneys and a specialist in adult entertainment defense work.

“Is it the whole state of Louisiana, or is it Acadiana, or is it just St. Martin Parish, or St. Martin Parish and Iberia Parish?” he said.

Louisiana’s obscenity statute has been upheld in prior challenges, but the state Supreme Court in 2000 struck down a section of the law that prohibited the selling of sex toys.

The second man charged in the case, Edward Burleigh Jr., owner of The Video Place, has not filed a challenge to the obscenity law. His lawyer said he expects that any ruling in Jacob’s case would apply to his client.