Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 401.0

529US1

Unit: $U42

[10-11-01 11:58:08] PAGES PGT: OPIN

326

ERIE v. PAP’S A. M.

Stevens, J., dissenting

citations to Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence,
468 U. S. 288 (1984), and Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491
U. S. 781 (1989), ante, at 293–295, neither of which involved
secondary effects. The plurality cannot have its cake and
eat it too—either Erie’s ordinance was not aimed at speech
and the plurality may attempt to justify the regulation under
the incidental burdens test, or Erie has aimed its law at the
secondary effects of speech, and the plurality can try to jus-
tify the law under that doctrine. But it cannot conﬂate the
two with the expectation that Erie’s interests aimed at sec-
ondary effects will be rendered unrelated to speech by virtue
of this doctrinal polyglot.

Correct analysis of the issue in this case should begin with
the proposition that nude dancing is a species of expressive
conduct that is protected by the First Amendment. As
Chief Judge Posner has observed, nude dancing ﬁts well
within a broad, cultural tradition recognized as expressive
in nature and entitled to First Amendment protection. See
904 F. 2d, at 1089–1104; see also Note, 97 Colum. L. Rev. 1844
(1997). The nudity of the dancer is both a component of the
protected expression and the speciﬁc target of the ordinance.
It is pure sophistry to reason from the premise that the regu-
lation of the nudity component of nude dancing is unrelated
to the message conveyed by nude dancers.
Indeed, both the
text of the ordinance and the reasoning in the plurality’s
opinion make it pellucidly clear that the city of Erie has pro-
hibited nude dancing “precisely because of its communica-
tive attributes.” Barnes, 501 U. S., at 577 (Scalia, J., con-
curring in judgment) (emphasis in original); see id., at 596
(White, J., dissenting).

III

The censorial purpose of Erie’s ordinance precludes reli-
ance on the judgment in Barnes as sufﬁcient support for the
Court’s holding today. Several differences between the Erie
ordinance and the statute at issue in Barnes belie the plural-
ity’s assertion that the two laws are “almost identical.”