Company sues WA over ban on sale of home sex crime kits • Washington State Standard

A company that makes over-the-counter sexual assault evidence kits is filing a lawsuit to overturn a Washington state law that prohibits the sale or promotion of products like the company’s.

Pennsylvania-based Leda Health, formerly known as MeToo Kits, and its founder Madison Campbell argue in their lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington that the state ban targets victims of sexual violence and violates the rights to free speech and advertisement under the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Leda also offers other services to survivors, such as emergency contraception and sexually transmitted disease testing, and is battling with other states over its testing kits in similar litigation.

“Our system too often forces victims to endure an intrusive physical examination in an unfamiliar location that can re-traumatize them,” said Campbell, who is herself a victim of sexual violence. “Leda tries to meet victims where they are.”

Supporters of the law in Washington, which will be passed in 2023 as House Bill 1564, said over-the-counter kits are inadequate compared to forensic examinations after sexual assault by trained medical personnel.

The company says the ban “disregards the admissibility of self-collected evidence that has been recognized in the past in courts in Washington and other jurisdictions.” Starting in 2023, the kits would no longer be used as admissible evidence in court, the state’s attorney general’s office said.

The law does not prohibit what is sold in the kit, which includes pens, plastic bags and other everyday items that can be used to collect evidence. Instead, the law prohibits the description of these items as a sexual assault evidence collection kit.

That is an important difference from the company whose lawsuit states that Washington State is “angry about what Leda Health told Survivors can Do with completely legal items.”

The bill, HB 1564, sponsored by Representative Gina Mosbrucker (R-Goldendale), passed with bipartisan support in the House and Senate.

Other countries also have has resisted the home kits.

Attorney General of Pennsylvania Leda Health filed a countersuit this month after the company sued New York and Pennsylvania over cease-and-desist orders from the two states. Maryland passed a similar ban to Washington in May.

Prosecutors supporting the law said the do-it-yourself kits deprive victims of the support and resources they could receive from a standard sexual assault nurse exam. Mosbrucker said the do-it-yourself kits give victims “false hope.”

“There is not a single sexual assault prosecution that has taken a rapist off the streets with a do-it-yourself kit,” Mosbrucker said in 2023. “Why would someone profit from a kit – which we believe will not lead to a prosecution – from someone who is just having yet another worst day of their life?”

Mosbrucker told the Standard that she had not read the lawsuit and could not yet comment on it.

In a statement to the Standard, Attorney General Bob Ferguson said his office would “vigorously defend this important state law.”

Ferguson sent a cease and desist order to Leda Health a year before HB 1564 passed, saying Leda Health’s advertising contained “patently false” claims, including marketing that could mislead survivors into believing the company’s kits were comparable to the state’s free kits. Leda Health subsequently stopped selling in Washington and has not sold in Washington since.

“Victims of sexual violence should know they are not alone. Important services from trained medical professionals are available to them free of charge to help them obtain justice,” Ferguson’s statement said, referring to the free sexual assault forensic exams or so-called SAFE kits in Washington.

SAFE kits, unlike home kits, are sent to the Washington State Patrol for processing and uploaded to a federal database used to identify repeat offenders. Last year, the state processed a backlog of over 10,000 SAFE kits.

“The problem this kit is trying to solve is real,” said Leah Griffin, a survivor and activist, during a 2023 committee hearing on at-home kits.

“It never occurred to me to raise $10 million in venture capital to sell a product that limits survivors’ ability to get justice,” she said.

Alex Little, a lawyer for Leda Health, said it’s understandable that survivors have different ideas about what options are best after an assault, but the company believes the kits give survivors more choices, not fewer.

“Neither the state nor Leda can promise you that any piece of evidence will be admitted,” Little said. “It comes down to the argument about what a woman or a man – a victim – is allowed to know, what they are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do after an assault.”