GRETNA, La. (AP) – A judge has ruled that portions of Louisiana law criminalizing consensual oral and anal sex between adults are unconstitutional and has permanently barred prosecutors in Jefferson Parish from enforcing it.

The Louisiana Electorate for Gays and Lesbians sued the Jefferson Parish district attorney’s office in 1996, after the office was dismissed from a case in Orleans Parish that resulted in a statewide ban on enforcing the “crimes against nature” law.

That 1996 suit prompted a preliminary injunction from State District Judge Robert Murphy in 1998, temporarily prohibiting Jefferson prosecutors from pursuing any cases. His ruling makes that permanent, prosecutors said.

Attorney John Rawls, representing the Louisiana Electorate, said he considered Murphy’s ruling a loss. The judge only partially granted what the group was seeking, Rawls said.

Rawls wanted two laws stricken, but the judge only struck a portion of one. Rawls said an appeal is planned.

Murphy wrote that he based his decision in part on the June 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case in which two men were arrested in 1998 for having sex in one of their homes. In that case, the high court struck down the nation’s sodomy laws as unconstitutional.

Despite that decision, Louisiana’s crimes against nature law, which includes bans on consensual oral and anal sex, remains on the books.

Rawls, who has called the law discriminatory, said the Legislature could have addressed the statute in its recent session, but did not.

But Murphy left intact portions of the state law that ban human sex with animals, solicitation for oral and anal sex and aggravated crimes against nature. Such acts are typically aggravated when they are nonconsensual or when the victim is underage.

Murphy also declined to strike down a statute that charges the state attorney general’s office with prosecuting organizations or corporations formed for the purpose of organized homosexuality, prostitution, narcotics and other activities spelled out in the law.

Rawls wanted references to homosexuality struck from the laws.