Netflix Injunction Win Upheld Over D.A.'s ‘Cuties’ Prosecution

A preliminary injunction in favor of Netflix Inc. will stand, barring a Texas state prosecutor from pursuing child pornography charges based on its streaming of the movie “Cuties,” while a lawsuit challenging the criminal charges as unconstitutional goes forward, the Fifth Circuit ruled.

Although federal courts generally don’t interfere in ongoing state criminal proceedings, in this case, the trial court reasonably found a bad-faith exception to Younger abstention—a carveout “to a federal court’s ‘virtually unflagging obligation’ to exercise conferred jurisdiction"—the appeals court said, in an opinion by Judge Don. R. Willett.

The movie is about an eleven-year-old Senegalese girl who ...