Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 405

529US1

Unit: $U42

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ERIE v. PAP’S A. M.

Stevens, J., dissenting

yet there was nudity.”
Id., at 42. The same lawmaker then
disfavorably compared the nude swimming incident to the
activities that occur in “some of these clubs” that exist
Ibid.15
in Erie—clubs that would be covered by the law.
Though such comments could be consistent with an interest
in a general prohibition of nudity, the complete absence of
commentary on that broader interest, and the councilmem-
bers’ exclusive focus on adult entertainment, is evidence of
In my view, we need not strain to ﬁnd
the ordinance’s aim.
consistency with more general purposes when the most natu-
ral reading of the record reﬂects a near obsessive preoccupa-
tion with a single target of the law.16

The text of Erie’s ordinance is also signiﬁcantly different
from the law upheld in Barnes.
In Barnes, the statute de-
ﬁned “nudity” as “the showing of the human male or female

15 Other members said their focus was on “bottle clubs,” and the like,
App. 43, and attempted to downplay the effect of the ordinance by ac-
knowledging that “the girls can wear thongs or a G-string and little pas-
ties that are smaller than a diamond.”
Ibid. Echoing that focus, another
member stated that “[t]here still will be adult entertainment in this town,
only it will be in a little different form.”

Id., at 47.

16 The plurality dismisses this evidence, declaring that it “will not strike
down an otherwise constitutional statute on the basis of an alleged illicit
motive.” Ante, at 292 (citing United States v. O’Brien, 391 U. S. 367, 382–
383 (1968); Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U. S. 41, 47–48 (1986)).
First, it is worth pointing out that this doctrinaire formulation of O’Brien’s
cautionary statement is overbroad. See generally L. Tribe, American
Constitutional Law § 12–5, pp. 819–820 (2d ed. 1988). Moreover, O’Brien
itself said only that we would not strike down a law “on the assumption
that a wrongful purpose or motive has caused the power to be exerted,”
391 U. S., at 383 (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted), and
that statement was due to our recognition that it is a “hazardous matter”
to determine the actual intent of a body as large as Congress “on the basis
of what fewer than a handful of Congressmen said about [a law],” id., at
384. Yet neither consideration is present here. We need not base our
inquiry on an “assumption,” nor must we infer the collective intent of a
large body based on the statements of a few, for we have in the record the
actual statements of all the city councilmembers who voted in favor of
the ordinance.