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A federal appeals court rebuked a Pennsylvania district attorney who threatened to file felony child pornography charges against teens who were photographed semi-nude unless they attended an “education program.”

In a unanimous decision issued Wednesday by the appeals court in Philadelphia, a three-judge panel said the threat amounted to a “Hobson’s Choice” that would retaliate against one of the girls and her family for exercising their constitutional right to free speech. A rare dose of government-issued sanity in the prosecutorial crusade against teenage ‘sexting’, the ruling upheld a lower-court order issued last year in the case.

The case stems from “inappropriate images of minors” found by officials at Pennsylvania’s Tunkhannock School District, that included, among other things, a girl posing in her bathing suit. In late 2008, Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick told an assembly of about 20 students and their parents he would bring felony child pornography charges against them unless they completed a six- to nine-month program.

For female offenders, that meant attending classes designed to help the participants “gain an understanding of what it means to be a girl in today’s society,” and require them to write a report on what the students did and “why it was wrong.”

Skumanick is no longer District Attorney.