Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 383.0

529US1

Unit: $U42

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

308

ERIE v. PAP’S A. M.

Scalia, J., concurring in judgment

subject to First Amendment scrutiny at all.”
Id., at 572
(opinion concurring in judgment). Erie’s ordinance, too, by
its terms prohibits not merely nude dancing, but the act—
irrespective of whether it is engaged in for expressive pur-
poses—of going nude in public. The facts that a preamble
to the ordinance explains that its purpose, in part, is to
“limi[t] a recent increase in nude live entertainment,” App.
to Pet. for Cert. 42a, that city councilmembers in supporting
the ordinance commented to that effect, see post, at 329–330,
and n. 16 (Stevens, J., dissenting), and that the ordinance
includes in the deﬁnition of nudity the exposure of devices
simulating that condition, see post, at 331, neither make the
law any less general in its reach nor demonstrate that what
the municipal authorities really ﬁnd objectionable is expres-
sion rather than public nakedness. As far as appears (and
as seems overwhelmingly likely), the preamble, the council-
members’ comments, and the chosen deﬁnition of the prohib-
ited conduct simply reﬂect the fact that Erie had recently
been having a public nudity problem not with streakers,
sunbathers, or hot dog vendors, see Barnes, supra, at 574
(Scalia, J., concurring in judgment), but with lap dancers.
There is no basis for the contention that the ordinance does
not apply to nudity in theatrical productions such as Equus
or Hair.
It was stipu-
lated in the trial court that no effort was made to enforce
the ordinance against a production of Equus involving nudity
that was being staged in Erie at the time the ordinance
became effective. App. 84. Notwithstanding Justice Ste-
vens’ assertion to the contrary, however, see post, at 328,
neither in the stipulation, nor elsewhere in the record, does
it appear that the city was aware of the nudity—and before
this Court counsel for the city attributed nonenforcement not
to a general exception for theatrical productions, but to the
fact that no one had complained. Tr. of Oral Arg. 16. One
instance of nonenforcement—against a play already in pro-
duction that prosecutorial discretion might reasonably have

Its text contains no such limitation.