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

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Naked baby on Nirvana album cover wasn’t…

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

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 3, 2025, 9:27 am CDT

A 1991 Nirvana album cover showing a naked baby floating underwater toward a dollar bill is not pornography, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin of the Central District of California ruled against Spencer Elden and tossed the 2021 that case he filed over the picture taken when he was 4 months old, report the New York Times, Law360 and Reuters.

Elden had sued under a federal law that allows civil remedies for those who were victims of certain crimes as minors. Elden claimed that Nirvana’s Nevermind album cover violated the law because it amounted to commercial child pornography.

Olguin disagreed after examining several factors. They included whether the focal point of the depiction is on the child’s genitalia, whether the setting is sexually suggestive, whether the child is nude, and whether the depiction is intended to elicit a sexual response in the viewer.

No factor “comes close to bringing the image within the ambit of the child pornography statute” except for the fact that Elden was pictured nude, Olguin said.

“This image—an image that is most analogous to a family photo of a nude child bathing—is plainly insufficient to support a finding of lasciviousness,” he wrote.

See also:

9th Circuit reinstates suit by now-grown-up Nirvana album-cover baby

Judge tosses child porn suit filed by man featured on Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ album cover as a baby

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