For the time being, at least, 50-something Ronald Thompson can return to his hobby of "snapping pictures of small children in their swimsuits underwater, without parental permission, at a San Antonio Water Park," because a state court has overturned the law that said he couldn't.

According to VICE, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' 8-1 decision last week invalidates as unconstitutional a state law that barred unauthorized photography or video-recording with "intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person," making "creepshots" completely legal:

In penning the decision, Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, opined: "The camera is essentially the photographer's pen and paintbrush. … A person's purposeful creation of photographs and visual recordings is entitled to the same First Amendment protection as the photographs and visual recordings themselves."...

The Court of Criminal Appeals said that while so-called "upskirting" is intolerable, nefarious intent cannot be proven, and even attempting to police it could lead to Orwellian overreach.

"Protecting someone who appears in public from being the object of sexual thoughts seems to be the sort of 'paternalistic interest in regulating the defendant's mind' that the First Amendment was designed to guard against," Keller wrote.

Lawyers for Thompson, whose conviction appeal was the occasion for the ruling, successfully argued that the law as written would apply to the "street photographer, the entertainment reporter, patrons of the arts, attendees to a parade or a pep-rally, [and] even the harmless eccentric." Which certainly makes it sound like a bad law, even if it has a good aim.

[Photo credit: Shutterstock/Jiri Vaclavek]