Doe v. Jindal

In Louisiana, unlike in any other state, individuals who have allegedly engaged in solicitation of oral or anal sex for compensation are treated differently depending on whether the government chooses to charge them under the prostitution statute or the Louisiana's Crime Against Nature by Solicitation ("CANS") statute. Unlike the prostitution law, the CANS law imposes mandatory sex offender registration. The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit in the Eastern District of Louisiana on behalf of nine individuals who were registered as sex offenders after being charged by CANS.

Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and Breakout!, a project of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, submitted a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the statute unconstitutionally targets LGBT individuals because of state-sponsored bias. The statute unduly targets the LGBT community by focusing on oral and anal sex, and is particularly used to target transgender women. In addition, prosecutors have complete and arbitrary discretion to apply CANS, leaving LGBT individuals susceptible to prejudicial treatment.