Gay Sex Stings Trigger Federal Lawsuit Against San Jose Police Department

SAN JOSE, CA — Legendary gay-rights attorney Bruce Nickerson, filed a federal lawsuit against the San Jose Police Department over undercover lewd-conduct sting operations that targeted gay men. In fact the case originated back in 2016 when a judge threw out six related cases and deemed the “decoy gay sex” operations unconstitutional.

While the lawsuit filed last week in Federal court by Nickerson seeks monetary damages of at least $1 million for five of the six defendants cleared by the June 2016 ruling of Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Jose S. Franco, Nickerson said that he is also seeking class-action status for the Federal lawsuit, and hopes that it will help end the practice by police gay sex sting operations.

Nickerson has made a name for himself over the past 30 years defending gay men caught in lewd gay sex acts in public where undercover vice officers solicit and suggest gay sex acts in public places such as city parks and public bathrooms. The gay men would then be arrested for lewd conduct.

“They’re invalid and discriminatory,” said Nickerson of the stings, “because they target male-male public sex and not also male-female public sex.” concluded Nickerson.

We reached out to the San Jose police department for comment on this story but they referred our inquiries about the lawsuit to the City Attorney’s Office. When I attempted to get comment from the City Attorney’s office’ spokesperson, they declined comment because they had not yet been formally served with lawsuit as of Friday Nov. 17.

We will continue to follow this story and bring you new developments as they become available.

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