Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 375

529US1

Unit: $U42

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

300

ERIE v. PAP’S A. M.

Opinion of O’Connor, J.

fects ﬂowing from the destruction of those cards. Post, at
311, n. 1.

But whether the harm is evident to our “intuition,” ibid.,
is not the proper inquiry.
If it were, we would simply say
there is no doubt that a regulation prohibiting public nudity
would alleviate the harmful secondary effects associated
In any event, Justice Souter conﬂates
with nude dancing.
two distinct concepts under O’Brien: whether there is a sub-
stantial government interest and whether the regulation fur-
thers that interest. As to the government interest, i. e.,
whether the threatened harm is real, the city council relied
on this Court’s opinions detailing the harmful secondary ef-
fects caused by establishments like Kandyland, as well as on
its own experiences in Erie. Justice Souter attempts to
denigrate the city council’s conclusion that the threatened
harm was real, arguing that we cannot accept Erie’s ﬁndings
because the subject of nude dancing is “fraught with some
emotionalism,” post, at 314. Yet surely the subject of draft-
ing our citizens into the military is “fraught” with more emo-
tionalism than the subject of regulating nude dancing.
Ibid.
Justice Souter next hypothesizes that the reason we can-
not accept Erie’s conclusion is that, since the question
whether these secondary effects occur is “amenable to empir-
ical treatment,” we should ignore Erie’s actual experience
and instead require such an empirical analysis. Post, at
314–315, n. 3 (referring to a “scientiﬁcally sound” study of-
fered by an amicus curiae to show that nude dancing estab-
In Nixon, how-
lishments do not cause secondary effects).
ever, we ﬂatly rejected that idea. 528 U. S., at 394 (noting
that the “invocation of academic studies said to indicate” that
the threatened harms are not real is insufﬁcient to cast doubt
on the experience of the local government).

As to the second point—whether the regulation furthers
the government interest—it is evident that, since crime and
other public health and safety problems are caused by the
presence of nude dancing establishments like Kandyland, a