R v Labaye
| R v Labaye | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Hearing: April 18, 2005 Judgment: December 21, 2005 |
|
| Full case name | Jean‑Paul Labaye v Her Majesty The Queen |
| Citations | [2005] 3 S.C.R. 728, 2005 SCC 80 |
| Prior history | Judgment for the Crown in the Court of Appeal for Quebec. |
| Holding | |
| Acts of group sex at a swingers' club were not indecent within the meaning of s. 197(1) of the Criminal Code because the acts were relatively private and did not degrade participants. Therefore, the club was not a common bawdy house within the meaning of s. 210(1) of the Code. | |
| Court Membership | |
|
Chief Justice: Beverley McLachlin Puisne Justices: Michel Bastarache, Ian Binnie, Louis LeBel, Marie Deschamps, Morris Fish, Rosalie Abella, Louise Charron |
|
| Reasons given | |
| Majority | McLachlin, joined by Major, Binnie, Deschamps, Fish, Abella and Charron |
| Dissent | Bastarache and LeBel |
R v Labaye, [2005] 3 S.C.R. 728, 2005 SCC 80, was a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on criminal indecency. The decision upheld consensual group sex and Swinging activities in a club and alleged bawdy-house as being consistent with personal autonomy and liberty. Labaye was accompanied by a sister case, R v Kouri.
Jean‑Paul Labaye of Montreal was charged with operating a "common bawdy-house," a violation under section 210(1) of the Criminal Code, for owning the club l'Orage, in which persons who paid membership fees and their guests could assemble and engage in group sex and oral sex and masturbate. All of these activities were consensual and, while members paid the club membership fees, the members did not pay each other in exchange for sex. Having been found guilty, Mr. Labaye was fined $2,500.
The majority of the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, held that Mr. Labaye should not have been convicted, thereby overturning the Quebec Court of Appeal. In determining whether Mr. Labaye was truly guilty of owning a bawdy-house, the Court had to decide whether the activities taking place within should be classified as indecent, since bawdy-houses are, by definition, houses in which prostitution or indecency occurs or is planned to occur. The Court first noted that morality was of no use to determining whether these activities were indecent. Only the objective standards of decency established in Canadian law would be of use, and those standards were concerned with whether any harm has been done. In reviewing precedent, which included Towne Cinema Theatres Ltd. v. The Queen (1985) and R. v. Butler (1992), the Court noted that it has been established, first in the 1985 case, that "obscenity" is defined as exceeding what Canadians would be able to socially accept (although there are some things that certain Canadians will not like but nevertheless will accept). Moreover, the obscenity must be harmful to certain people. In R. v. Butler and Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Canada (Minister of Justice), it was further established that whether something does or threatens to do harm to certain people is important to determining whether something is indecent, and indeed harm became the only measure of indecency in Canadian law. (The dissent disputed this point, arguing that only now, with this decision, had harm become the only measure.) At any rate, in R. v. Labaye, the Court approved of the harm-only approach and wrote that "Harm or significant risk of harm is easier to prove than a community standard" of decency. The Court went on to establish more guidelines as to how to measure harm.
...
Wikipedia