Title: Lanier v. City of Newton

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

518 So. 2d 40 (1987)
Randall E. LANIER
v.
CITY OF NEWTON, Alabama, etc.
86-515-CER.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
September 18, 1987.
Rehearing Denied December 4, 1987.
*41 Randall E. Lanier, pro se.
Lawrence A. Anderson, Huntsville, for appellant.
Joseph W. Adams, Ozark, for appellee.
Walter Record, Huntsville, for amicus curiae City of Huntsville.
HOUSTON, Justice.
This Court consented to answer the following questions certified by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit 807 F.2d 922:
*42 3. "If the answer to question (2) is no, then is Ordinance 84-1 inconsistent with State law, in particular with Ala. Code [1975,] § 28-3A-11 and with Alabama [Alcoholic Beverage Control Board] Rule and Regulation 20-X-6-.12, because, for example, the Ordinance prohibits activities permitted under State law or because the municipality is imposing fines and jail sentences not provided for under State law?"
Our answer to each part of question 1 is yes. Our answer to question 2 is no, but see our discussion of Section 2(c) of the ordinance, in which we find this section of the ordinance to be unreasonable. Our answer to question 3 is no.
The general Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board regulation prohibiting obscene, lewd, or indecent conduct in establishments selling alcoholic beverages within the State of Alabama is as follows:
The ordinance adopted by the Town of Newton extended the prohibitions within establishments selling alcoholic beverages to include the following:
"Section 2 Nudity, sexual conduct prohibited.
Is this inconsistent with Regulation 20-X-6-.12? We think not.
The Alabama Constitution of 1901, Article 4, § 89, states:
*43 Municipalities have been given legislative authority by § 11-45-1, Code of Alabama 1975. This section reads as follows:
The constitution compels us to interpret the emphasized portion of the foregoing code section (setting out what is commonly known as the "police power") as being subject to the constitutional restriction that any ordinance adopted by authority of such police power must not be inconsistent with the general laws of the State.
"Inconsistent" is defined by Black's Law Dictionary (5th ed. 1979) as "[m]utually repugnant or contradictory; contrary, the one to the other, so that both cannot stand, but the acceptance or establishment of the one implies the abrogation or abandonment of the other." It implies "contradiction qualities which cannot coexistnot merely a lack of uniformity in details." City of Montgomery v. Barefield, 1 Ala.App. 515, 523, 56 So. 260, 262 (1911).
In Gadsden Motel Co. v. City of Attalla, 378 So. 2d 705 (Ala.1979), this Court held that an ordinance prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages within the City or its police jurisdiction between 12:01 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. on any secular day was not inconsistent with a regulation promulgated by the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board requiring its licensees to discontinue sales, and close at 12:00 midnight Saturday until 12:01 a.m. Monday and on election days until after the polls close.
Judge DeCarlo, writing for the Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama, in Congo v. State, 409 So. 2d 475, 478, (Ala.Cr.App. 1982), cert. denied, 412 So. 2d 276 (Ala. 1982), wrote:
We do not find that Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board Regulation 20-X-6-.12 preempted the field of regulating what attire could be worn or what activities could take place in establishments licensed to serve liquor. The regulation expressly prohibited certain lack of attire and certain acts. The ordinance enacted by the Town of Newton is not inconsistent with this; it merely prohibits the lack of attire on portions of the anatomy that were not addressed by the Board. This ordinance is not repugnant or contradictory to the Board's regulation. The ordinance does not in any way abrogate or abandon the regulation. Gadsden Motor Co. v. City of Attalla, supra.
*44 We will not, by judicial fiat, declare as unreasonable or arbitrary the ordinance adopted by the elected officials of Newton that prohibits a "female person" from exposing to public view in "an establishment dealing in alcoholic beverages" any portion of her breasts below the top of the areola (Section 2(b)), or prohibits a person maintaining, owning, or operating such an establishment from allowing such exposure (Section 2(d)). The prohibition is anatomically specific.
However, we do find Section 2(c) of the ordinance unreasonable. This purports to prohibit liquor licensees from suffering or permitting any person to expose to public view "his or her cleavage" in an establishment "dealing in alcoholic beverages." Cleavage is "the depression between a woman's breast esp. when made visible by the wearing of low-cut dresses," Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1971), or "the separation between a woman's breasts," American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1969). It is unreasonable to expect a liquor licensee, from the ordinance as written, to know how high a woman's dress must be cut to keep her from exposing to public view "her cleavage." "[H]is ... cleavage" is mutually repugnant as "cleavage" is now defined. For fear that the courts may "unsex"[1] the word, liquor licensees would have to second guess the courts to know what kind of shirts they must require male employees or customers to wear. The liquor licensees are not furnished with sufficient guidelines by Section 2(c) of the ordinance to know what attire or lack thereof is prohibited. This is unreasonable.
The ordinance has a severability clause:
CERTIFIED QUESTIONS ANSWERED.
TORBERT, C.J., and MADDOX, JONES, SHORES, BEATTY, ADAMS and STEAGALL, JJ., concur.
ALMON, J., not sitting.
[1]  W. Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, sc. V, 1. 41. Lady Macbeth: "... Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here...."