ACLU again backs Craig appeal to drop plea

The American Civil Liberties Union is again going to bat for U.S. Sen. Larry Craig in his bid to withdraw his guilty plea in a restroom sex-solicitation case.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals on Wednesday granted a request from the ACLU to file a “friend of the court” brief backing Craig in his appeal there.

“The free expression concerns that this case presents are of significant interest not only to Appellant but also to every individual who risks arrest, charge, and/or prosecution for inviting another individual to have sex,” the ACLU wrote to the appeals court.

The civil rights organization argued earlier that the entire airport restroom sting operation that ensnared Craig and 40 other men in a four-month period was unconstitutional. In part, the ACLU argued that Minnesota’s disorderly conduct statute, to which Craig pleaded guilty, is overly broad because it could cover public invitations to have sex in a private place. Such free speech can’t be criminalized, the ACLU argued.

“It violates the right to free expression guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the ACLU wrote to the court of appeals. “Because Appellant pled guilty to a violation of an unconstitutional law, Appellant must be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea to correct a manifest injustice.”

In an earlier district court ruling, Judge Charles Porter wrote that the ACLU’s arguments were inapplicable to Craig’s case, a contention the ACLU now disputes.

Craig’s attorneys earlier welcomed the group’s involvement in the case.

Craig was arrested June 11 in a men’s room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport as part of a lewd conduct investigation, and signed and mailed in a plea agreement Aug. 1 pleading guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor. A more serious gross misdemeanor charge of interference with privacy was dropped in the plea agreement.

Once the incident became public Aug. 27, Craig maintained he’d done nothing wrong and that an undercover officer had misinterpreted his peering through a gap in the restroom stall and hand and foot movements under the stall wall as signals for soliciting sex.

Under pressure from Senate GOP leaders, Craig said he intended to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30, but then changed course and said he’d serve out his full term, which runs through January 2008.