Naked baby on Nirvana album cover wasn’t child porn victim, federal judge rules

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Bare child on Nirvana album cowl wasn’t…

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Bare child on Nirvana album cowl wasn’t youngster porn sufferer, federal choose guidelines

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 3, 2025, 9:27 am CDT

A 1991 Nirvana album cowl exhibiting a unadorned child floating underwater towards a greenback invoice shouldn’t be pornography, a federal choose dominated Tuesday.

U.S. District Choose Fernando Olguin of the Central District of California dominated towards Spencer Elden and tossed the 2021 that case he filed over the image taken when he was 4 months previous, report the New York Instances, Law360 and Reuters.

Elden had sued beneath a federal legislation that permits civil cures for individuals who have been victims of sure crimes as minors. Elden claimed that Nirvana’s Nevermind album cowl violated the legislation as a result of it amounted to industrial youngster pornography.

Olguin disagreed after analyzing a number of elements. They included whether or not the focus of the depiction is on the kid’s genitalia, whether or not the setting is sexually suggestive, whether or not the kid is nude, and whether or not the depiction is meant to elicit a sexual response within the viewer.

No issue “comes near bringing the picture inside the ambit of the kid pornography statute” apart from the truth that Elden was pictured nude, Olguin mentioned.

“This picture—a picture that’s most analogous to a household picture of a nude youngster bathing—is plainly inadequate to assist a discovering of lasciviousness,” he wrote.

See additionally:

ninth Circuit reinstates go well with by now-grown-up Nirvana album-cover child

Choose tosses youngster porn go well with filed by man featured on Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ album cowl as a child

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