Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca11-14-15354/USCOURTS-ca11-14-15354-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Brad Buehrle
Appellant
City of Key West
Appellee

Document Text:

[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 14-15354

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 4:13-cv-10103-JEM

BRAD BUEHRLE, 

 Plaintiff-Appellee,

 versus

CITY OF KEY WEST, 

 Defendant-Appellant.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Florida

________________________

(December 29, 2015)

Before MARCUS, WILLIAM PRYOR and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges.

JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judge: 

The City of Key West, Florida has barred Brad Buehrle from opening a 

tattoo establishment in the City’s designated historic district, pursuant to an 

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ordinance strictly limiting the number of tattoo establishments permitted to operate 

there. Mr. Buehrle contends that the act of tattooing is entitled to First 

Amendment protection and that the ordinance is an unconstitutional restriction on 

his freedom of expression. The district court granted summary judgment to the 

City, agreeing with Mr. Buehrle that tattooing constitutes artistic expression 

protected by the First Amendment but nevertheless finding the ordinance to be a 

reasonable time, place, and manner restriction. We agree with the district court’s 

conclusion that tattooing is protected artistic expression, but we reverse the 

summary judgment because, on the record before us, the City has failed to show 

that the ordinance is a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction.

I. BACKGROUND

Mr. Buehrle wished to open a tattoo establishment in the City’s historic 

district. After negotiating a lease to rent commercial space there, he attempted to 

file an application with the City for a business license. The City denied Mr. 

Buehrle’s application. The City prohibits tattoo establishments in the historic 

district, see Key West, Fla., Code of Ordinances, subpart A, § 42-6(a), and allows 

tattoo establishments only in the General Commercial District as a “conditional 

use,” see id. subpart B, § 122-418(21). 

The island of Key West has a history of restricting the operation of tattoo 

establishments. From 1966 to 2007, there was a blanket prohibition on operating 

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any tattoo establishments on the island. According to local lore, this ban arose at 

the request of the United States Navy, which feared that its sailors would obtain illadvised tattoos. Today, the City permits only two tattoo businesses to operate in 

the historic district as lawful non-conforming uses; it allowed these as part of the 

settlement of a prior lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the ban. The City 

maintains that, given its history, tattoo establishments are inconsistent with the 

district’s historic character. It also fears that rash tourists will obtain regrettable 

tattoos, leading to negative association with Key West. Thus, it argues, permitting 

more tattoo establishments will adversely affect tourism. 

Mr. Buehrle filed suit in state court in Monroe County, Florida. The City

removed the action to the United States District Court for the Southern District of 

Florida. After conducting discovery, the parties filed cross-motions for summary 

judgment. The district court granted the City’s motion and denied Mr. Buehrle’s, 

concluding that although the act of tattooing constitutes protected speech, the 

City’s ordinance was content neutral and constituted a reasonable time, place, and 

manner restriction. This is Mr. Buehrle’s appeal.

II. DISCUSSION

A. Tattooing as Artistic Expression

The First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit states from making any law 

abridging the freedom of speech. U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV; Bd. of Regents of 

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State Colls. v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 581 (1972). This protection “does not end at the 

spoken or written word,” Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 404 (1989), but extends 

to various forms of artistic expression. See Kaplan v. California, 413 U.S. 115, 

119-20 (1973) (“[P]ictures, films, paintings, drawings, and engravings . . . have 

First Amendment protection . . . .”); see also Hurley v. Irish-Am. Gay, Lesbian & 

Bisexual Grp. of Bos., 515 U.S. 557, 569 (1995) (noting that the First Amendment 

“unquestionably shield[s]” the “painting of Jackson Pollock, music of Arnold 

Schöenberg, or Jabberwocky verse of Lewis Carroll”). Although the Supreme 

Court has never explicitly defined the entire universe of artistic expression 

safeguarded by the First Amendment, it has cast the amendment’s protections over 

a variety of artistic media, including movies, Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 

U.S. 495, 501-02 (1952); music without words, Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 

U.S. 781, 790 (1989); and nude dancing, Schad v. Borough of Mount Ephraim, 452 

U.S. 61, 66 (1981).

We have never addressed whether tattooing is a protected form of artistic 

expression. The Ninth Circuit encountered this issue in Anderson v. City of 

Hermosa Beach, where it held that tattooing was protected speech and that 

Hermosa Beach constitutionally could not ban tattoo establishments from operating 

in the city. 621 F.3d 1051, 1055 (9th Cir. 2010). We join the Ninth Circuit in 

holding that the act of tattooing is sheltered by the First Amendment, in large part 

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because we find tattooing to be virtually indistinguishable from other protected

forms of artistic expression. As our sister circuit observed, “[t]he principal 

difference between a tattoo and, for example, a pen-and-ink drawing, is that a 

tattoo is engrafted onto a person’s skin rather than drawn on paper. . . . [A] form of 

speech does not lose First Amendment protection based on the kind of surface it is 

applied to.” Id. at 1061.

The City points us to a number of district and state court decisions drawing a

distinction between the process of creating a tattoo and the tattoo itself. These 

courts reason that the act of wearing a tattoo is communicative, and consequently

protected speech, but that the process of tattooing is not. See, e.g., Hold Fast 

Tattoo, LLC v. City of North Chicago, 580 F. Supp. 2d 656, 660 (N.D. Ill. 2008); 

Yurkew v. Sinclair, 495 F. Supp. 1248, 1253-54 (D. Minn. 1980); State v. White, 

560 S.E.2d 420, 423 (S.C. 2002). In the opinion of these courts, a tattoo artist’s 

“interest in engaging in conduct involving tattooing does not rise to the level of 

displaying the actual image conveyed by the tattoo, as the tattoo itself is clearly 

more communicative, and would be regarded as such by the average observer, than 

the process of engrafting the tattoo on the recipient.” Yurkew, 495 F. Supp. at 

1254. This, these courts explain, is because “[t]he act of tattooing . . . is not 

intended to convey a particularized message. The very nature of the tattoo artist is 

to custom-tailor a different or unique message for each customer to wear on the 

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skin.” Hold Fast Tattoo, 580 F. Supp. 2d at 660. As such, “[t]he act of tattooing is 

one step removed from actual expressive conduct” because, although it can be used 

to convey a message, it is the customer’s message being conveyed, not the tattoo 

artist’s. Id.

These decisions treat the First Amendment’s protection as a mantle, worn by 

one party to the exclusion of another and passed between them depending on the 

artistic technique employed, the canvas used, and each party’s degree of creative or 

expressive input. But the First Amendment’s safeguards are not so neatly cabined. 

Protected artistic expression frequently encompasses a sequence of acts by 

different parties, often in relation to the same piece of work. The First Amendment 

protects the artist who paints a piece just as surely as it protects the gallery owner 

who displays it, the buyer who purchases it, and the people who view it. See 

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 482 (1965) (“The right of freedom of 

speech and press includes not only the right to utter or to print, but the right to 

distribute, the right to receive, the right to read . . . .”).

Any other interpretation of the First Amendment in this context would 

deprive it of the force and effect the Supreme Court has told us it deserves. See 

Ward, 491 U.S. at 790. A regulation limiting the creation of art curtails expression 

as effectively as a regulation limiting its display. The government need not ban a 

protected activity such as the exhibition of art if it can simply proceed upstream

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and dam the source. Consistent with the Supreme Court’s teaching, the right to 

display a tattoo loses meaning if the government can freely restrict the right to 

obtain a tattoo in the first place. See Anderson, 621 F.3d at 1062 (“[T]he tattoo 

cannot be created without the tattooing process . . . . Thus, as with writing or 

painting, the tattooing process is inextricably intertwined with the purely 

expressive product (the tattoo), and is itself entitled to full First Amendment 

protection.”). For this reason, the Supreme Court has never “drawn a distinction 

between the process of creating a form of pure speech (such as writing or painting) 

and the product of these processes (the essay or the artwork) in terms of the First 

Amendment protection afforded.” Id. at 1061 (emphasis omitted); see also Simon 

& Schuster, Inc. v. Members of the N.Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. 105, 

116-18 (1991) (First Amendment protects both the act of writing content and the 

act of publishing it).

We suspect the idea that a tattoo represents the expression of the wearer and 

not the tattoo artist may spring from an outmoded perception of the tattoo industry. 

During the 1960s, tattoo artists began evolving the craft of tattooing beyond the 

rote application of standardized designs that historically characterized the medium. 

See Ryan J. Walsh, Comment, Painting on a Canvas of Skin: Tattooing and the 

First Amendment, 78 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1063, 1090-91 (2011). Today, tattooing as 

practiced by a large segment of tattoo artists “emphasizes creativity and 

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expression” and is “quite self-consciously an expressive movement.” Id. As one 

commentator writes,

[T]attooing has become a leading art form . . . and the subject of 

museum exhibits throughout the United States. Today, tattoo 

artists are known for their large-scale, unified, custom designs, and 

some have even sought copyrights for their finished pieces.

Currently, most tattoo artists are graduates of college art programs 

who seek the intrinsic appeal of the medium and desire to break 

free from the limitations, distortions and irrelevance of 

conventional elitist modes of art production. 

Carly Strocker, Comment, These Tats Are Made for Talking: Why Tattoos and 

Tattooing Are Protected Speech Under the First Amendment, 31 Loy. L.A. Ent. L. 

Rev. 175, 187 (2011) (footnotes and internal quotation marks omitted). Mr. 

Buehrle and his work appear to be of this ilk, and we see no meaningful basis on 

which to distinguish his work from that of any other artist practicing in a visual 

medium, certainly not a basis sufficient to deny him First Amendment protection.

B. Reasonable Time, Place, and Manner Restriction

Having decided that tattooing is artistic expression protected by the First

Amendment, we must determine whether the City’s municipal ordinance limiting

that expression is constitutional. A municipality may regulate protected artistic 

expression only if the regulation (1) is justified without reference to the content of 

the regulated speech, (2) is narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental 

interest, and (3) leaves open ample alternative channels for communication of the 

information. Ward, 491 U.S. at 791. Mr. Buehrle concedes the ordinance is 

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content-neutral. Thus, we need only scrutinize the ordinance under the latter two 

factors. Because we conclude that the City has failed to demonstrate that the 

ordinance serves a significant governmental interest, we do not address whether it

leaves open ample alternative channels of communication.

The City argues that the ordinance’s purpose is to prevent the deterioration 

of the historic district. Specifically, the City fears that allowing additional tattoo 

establishments to operate in the historic district would adversely impact the 

“character and fabric” of the district and thus the tourism that the district attracts. 

We do not doubt that these are substantial government interests. See One World 

One Family Now v. City of Miami Beach, 175 F.3d 1282, 1288 (11th Cir. 1999) 

(“There is . . . no question that the city’s further interest in creating an aesthetic 

ambiance which will attract tourists . . . is a substantial government interest, 

especially where, as here, a designated historic area is at issue.”); Messer v. City of 

Douglasville, 975 F.2d 1505, 1510 (11th Cir. 1992) (“A government has a more 

significant interest in the aesthetics of designated historical areas than in other 

areas.”).

Our inquiry does not end there, however. We do not simply take the City at 

its word that the ordinance serves the aforementioned interests. Instead, the City

must demonstrate that it had a reasonable basis for believing that its regulation 

would further these legitimate interests. See Zibtluda, LLC v. Gwinnett Cty. ex rel. 

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Bd. of Comm’rs, 411 F.3d 1278, 1286 (11th Cir. 2005). This burden is not a 

rigorous one. Id. But a municipality cannot “get away with shoddy data or 

reasoning.” City of Los Angeles v. Alameda Books, Inc., 535 U.S. 425, 438 (2002)

(plurality opinion). It “must rely on at least some pre-enactment evidence” that the 

regulation would serve its asserted interests. Peek-A-Boo Lounge of Bradenton, 

Inc. v. Manatee Cty., 337 F.3d 1251, 1268 (11th Cir. 2003); see also Zibtluda, 411 

F.3d at 1286 (“Nevertheless, [the enacting body] must cite to some meaningful 

indication—in the language of the code or in the record of legislative 

proceedings—that the legislature’s purpose in enacting the challenged statute was 

a concern over secondary effects rather than merely opposition to proscribed 

expression.”) (alteration in original) (quoting Ranch House, Inc. v. Amerson, 238 

F.3d 1273, 1283 (11th Cir. 2001)). Such evidence can include anything

“reasonably believed to be relevant—including a municipality’s own findings, 

evidence gathered by other localities, or evidence described in a judicial opinion.” 

Peek-A-Boo Lounge, 337 F.3d at 1268 (internal quotation marks omitted).

The City has failed to meet its burden. Aside from the ordinance’s vague 

statement of purpose,1 the only support for the City’s claim that the ordinance

 1 An ordinance’s statement of purpose may demonstrate that the ordinance serves a 

significant governmental interest if the statement of purpose is sufficiently detailed and 

supported with evidence. See Zibtluda, 411 F.3d at 1286-87 (upholding an ordinance based on its 

statement of purpose, which cited to experiences of other counties and municipalities, 

documentary evidence, and oral testimony). Here, though, the ordinance’s statement of purpose 

refers to no evidence and contains no detail beyond its general assertion that limiting the number 

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serves significant governmental interests consists of statements by Donald Craig, 

the City’s Director of Planning. In his deposition and an affidavit submitted in 

support of the City’s motion for summary judgment, Mr. Craig asserted that: Key 

West historically prohibited tattoo establishments from operating in the historic 

district; allowing tattoo establishments to operate there would impact the district’s 

“character and fabric,” which “could . . . impact tourism”; and tourists might 

negatively associate Key West with tattoos that they had obtained there but come 

to regret.

As an initial matter, Mr. Craig’s reasons were given in the context of Mr. 

Buehrle’s lawsuit, well after the enactment of the ordinance. They therefore 

cannot serve as pre-enactment evidence that the ordinance serves a significant 

governmental interest. See Peek-A-Boo Lounge, 337 F.3d at 1268; see also 

Zibtluda, 411 F.3d at 1286. Even were that not the case, we would still find Mr. 

Craig’s statements inadequate because they are, by and large, unsubstantiated. It is 

undisputed that there was a blanket prohibition on the operation of tattoo 

establishments on the island of Key West from 1966 to 2007, but nothing in the 

record corroborates Mr. Craig’s assertions about the prohibition’s origin or tells us 

whether any tattoo establishments operated in the area prior to 1966. 

 

of tattoo establishments will prevent “the potential deterioration of a preserved historic district; 

an increase in the incidence of disease; and land use incompatibilities.” Key West, Fl., Code of 

Ordinances, subpart B, § 122-1543(a). On appeal, the City argues only deterioration of a 

preserved historic district. 

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Significantly, the mere fact that Key West successfully prohibited tattoo 

establishments in the historic district for approximately forty years does not 

support the conclusion that allowing more tattoo establishments would cause the 

district’s historical value to deteriorate and impact tourism. To the contrary, the 

City’s recent experience suggests otherwise. The City concedes the absence of any 

ill effect as a result of the two tattoo establishments it currently allows to operate in 

the historic district. And it fails to explain why allowing additional tattoo 

establishments to operate there would sour the district’s historical flavor, especially 

since the first two apparently have not done so. 

Particularly glaring is the lack of evidentiary support for the City’s

assertions concerning tattooing’s purported effect on tourism. The City pointed to 

no study indicating that the operation of tattoo establishments in the historic 

district would impact the tourism industry. The City conducted no investigation

and made no findings. It relied upon no expert testimony, findings made by other 

municipalities, or evidence described in judicial decisions. It failed to muster even

anecdotal evidence supporting its claims. The closest the City came to presenting 

evidence on the impact on tourism was a passing reference to a few lines of a 

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Jimmy Buffett song. And we are unsure whether even that reference fully supports 

its position.

2

 

The First Amendment requires more. We are not at liberty simply to 

“presume the evidence” needed to sustain the ordinance. Peek-A-Boo Lounge, 337 

F.3d at 1267. “[T]he government bears the burden of showing that the articulated 

concern has more than merely speculative factual grounds.” Flanigan’s Enters., 

Inc. v. Fulton Cty., 242 F.3d 976, 986 (11th Cir. 2001).

3

 The City failed to satisfy 

this burden. On the record before us, the City has presented insufficient evidence 

that it had a reasonable basis for believing that its ordinance would actually serve

the significant governmental interests it propounds. Perhaps, if the district court 

chooses to permit the introduction of new evidence on remand, the City can 

produce the kind of evidence that would satisfy its burden, but so far it has not 

done so. 

 2 Jimmy Buffett’s song “Margaritaville” was referenced twice in the record, once by Mr. 

Craig in his deposition and once by the City’s attorney in oral argument before the district court, 

to support the claim that inebriated tourists are likely to get and then regret tattoos if more tattoo 

establishments operate in the historic district. But the singer in “Margaritaville”—seemingly far 

from suffering embarrassment over his tattoo—considers it “a real beauty.” Jimmy Buffett, 

“Margaritaville,” on Songs You Know by Heart (Geffen Records 1985).

3 Although the decision in Flanigan’s Enterprises was ultimately superseded on other 

grounds by a county ordinance, Fulton County, Ga., Code § 18–79(17), see Flanigan’s Enters., 

Inc. of Ga. v. Fulton Cty., 596 F.3d 1265 (11th Cir. 2010), it remains valid for the cited 

proposition. 

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III. CONCLUSION

The district court erred when it concluded that the City’s municipal 

ordinance restricting the number of tattoo establishments in its historic district was 

a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction on protected expression. We 

reverse the grant of summary judgment and remand the case to the district court for 

further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

REVERSED and REMANDED.

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