Opinion ID: 175055
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Tattoo

Text: There appears to be little dispute that the tattoo itself is pure First Amendment speech. The Supreme Court has consistently held that the Constitution looks beyond written or spoken words as mediums of expression. Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, 515 U.S. 557, 569, 115 S.Ct. 2338, 132 L.Ed.2d 487 (1995). Accordingly, the Supreme Court and our court have recognized various forms of entertainment and visual expression as purely expressive activities, including music without words, Ward, 491 U.S. at 790, 109 S.Ct. 2746; dance, Schad, 452 U.S. at 65-66, 101 S.Ct. 2176; topless dancing, Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc., 422 U.S. 922, 932-934, 95 S.Ct. 2561, 45 L.Ed.2d 648 (1975); movies, Joseph Burstyn, Inc.v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495, 501-02, 72 S.Ct. 777, 96 L.Ed. 1098 (1952); parades with or without banners or written messages, Hurley, 515 U.S. at 568, 115 S.Ct. 2338; and both paintings and their sale, White v. City of Sparks, 500 F.3d 953, 956 (9th Cir.2007). We have afforded these expressive activities full constitutional protection without relying on the Spence test. See Hurley, 515 U.S. at 569, 115 S.Ct. 2338 ([A] narrow, succinctly articulable message is not a condition of constitutional protection, which if confined to expressions conveying a `particularized message,' would never reach the unquestionably shielded painting of Jackson Pollack, music of Arnold Schöenberg, or Jabberwocky verse of Lewis Carroll. (citation omitted) (quoting Spence, 418 U.S. at 411, 94 S.Ct. 2727)). Tattoos are generally composed of words, realistic or abstract images, symbols, or a combination of these, all of which are forms of pure expression that are entitled to full First Amendment protection. Tattoos can express a countless variety of messages and serve a wide variety of functions, including: decorative; religious; magical; punitive; and as an indication of identity, status, occupation, or ownership. Mark Gustafson, The Tattoo in the Later Roman Empire and Beyond, in WRITTEN ON THE BODY: THE TATTOO IN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN HISTORY 17 (Jane Caplan ed., Reaktion Books 2000); see also Alan Govenar, The Variable Context of Chicano Tattooing, in MARKS OF CIVILIZATION 209 (Arnold Rubin ed., Regents of the University of California 1988) (discussing the religious, social, and political purposes of tattooing); Clinton R. Sanders, Drill and Frill: Client Choice, Client Typologies, and Interactional Control in Commercial Tattooing Settings, in MARKS OF CIVILIZATION, supra, at 222-23 (discussing the wide variety of reasons people choose to get a tattoo, including symbolization of an interpersonal relationship, participation in a group, representation of key interests and activities, self-identification, and making a decorative or aesthetic statement). We do not profess to understand the work of tattoo artists to the same degree as we know the finely wrought sketches of Leonardo da Vinci or Albrecht Dürer, but we can take judicial notice of the skill, artistry, and care that modern tattooists have demonstrated. The principal difference between a tattoo and, for example, a pen-and-ink drawing, is that a tattoo is engrafted onto a person's skin rather than drawn on paper. This distinction has no significance in terms of the constitutional protection afforded the tattoo; a form of speech does not lose First Amendment protection based on the kind of surface it is applied to. It is true that the nature of the surface to which a tattoo is applied and the procedure by which the tattoo is created implicate important health and safety concerns that may not be present in other visual arts, but this consideration is relevant to the governmental interest potentially justifying a restriction on protected speech, not to whether the speech is constitutionally protected. We have little difficulty recognizing that a tattoo is a form of pure expression entitled to full constitutional protection.