Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 390

529US1

Unit: $U42

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Cite as: 529 U. S. 277 (2000)

315

Opinion of Souter, J.

to current fact, the city council’s closest approach to an evi-
dentiary record on secondary effects and their causes was
the statement of one councilor, during the debate over the
ordinance, who spoke of increases in sex crimes in a way that
might be construed as a reference to secondary effects. See
App. 44. But that reference came at the end of a litany of
concerns (“free condoms in schools, drive-by shootings, abor-
tions, suicide machines,” and declining student achievement
test scores) that do not seem to be secondary effects of nude
dancing.
Ibid. Nor does the invocation of Barnes v. Glen
Theatre, Inc., 501 U. S. 560 (1991), in one paragraph of the
preamble to Erie’s ordinance sufﬁce. App. to Pet. for Cert.
42a. The plurality opinion in Barnes made no mention
of evidentiary showings at all, and though my separate opin-
ion did make a pass at the issue, I did not demand reliance
on germane evidentiary demonstrations, whether speciﬁc to
the statute in question or developed elsewhere. To invoke
Barnes, therefore, does not indicate that the issue of evi-
dence has been addressed.

There is one point, however, on which an evidentiary rec-
ord is not quite so hard to ﬁnd, but it hurts, not helps, the
city. The ﬁnal O’Brien requirement is that the incidental
speech restriction be shown to be no greater than essential
to achieve the government’s legitimate purpose. 391 U. S.,
at 377. To deal with this issue, we have to ask what basis
there is to think that the city would be unsuccessful in coun-
tering any secondary effects by the signiﬁcantly lesser re-
striction of zoning to control the location of nude dancing,
thus allowing for efﬁcient law enforcement, restricting ef-
fects on property values, and limiting exposure of the public.

position to look to the facts of their own community’s experience as well
as to experiences elsewhere. Their failure to do so is made all the clearer
by one of the amicus briefs, largely devoted to the argument that scien-
tiﬁcally sound studies show no such correlation. See Brief for First
Amendment Lawyers Association as Amicus Curiae 16–23; id., at App.
1–29.