Opinion ID: 377140
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Standards for License Issuance

Text: 48 The Peoria ordinance provides that a license shall issue to an applicant unless: 49 (a) (T)he applicant is under (the) age of eighteen (18) years or under any legal disability. 50 (b) The applicant is a person who is not of good moral character and reputation in the community in which he or she resides. 51 (c) The applicant has been convicted of any of the following offenses, unless upon investigation the City Manager finds that such convictions occurred at least four (4) years prior to the date of the application, that the applicant has had no subsequent convictions and has shown evidence of rehabilitation sufficient to warrant the public trust: 52 (1) A felony under federal laws or the laws of this or any other state, 53 (2) Prostitution, soliciting for a prostitute, pandering, keeping a place of prostitution, patronizing a prostitute, pimping, obscenity, selling harmful material or having a tie in the sale of obscene publications to distributors, under the laws of this state or equivalent laws or ordinances of the United States or any other state or city, or any other crime or misdemeanor opposed to decency and morality. 54 (d) The applicant has held an interest in a license either under this Article, Article X of Chapter 16 of the Code of the City of Peoria, which regulates massage establishments, or Chapter 3 of the Code of the City of Peoria which regulates alcoholic liquor and (said license) has been revoked for cause. 55 (e) The applicant, at the time of application for renewal of any license issued under this Article, would not be eligible for such license upon a first application. 56 (f) The operation as proposed by the applicant, if permitted, would not have complied with all applicable laws, including but not limited to building, health, planning, housing, zoning and fire codes of the City of Peoria. 34 57 We do not understand plaintiffs to challenge the validity of subsection (a). Plaintiffs have standing to contest the validity of subsection (b). Counsel for defendants virtually conceded in oral argument before this court that this subsection is invalid, and we hold it to be so because it gives city authorities an overbroad discretion to impose a prior restraint on protected speech. 35 The district court's judgment in this regard is affirmed. 58 Plaintiffs are subject to and have standing to attack subsections (e) and (f). Subsection (e) is constitutional to the extent that the licensing provisions of the ordinance are found to be so, because it merely states that a license shall be renewed according to the same standards under which a license may be issued. Subsection (f), we think, is subject to the same objection as the special inspection requirements we held invalid in Part VI-C of this opinion, supra. Only adult bookstores are subject to the licensing requirement, so other bookstores are not subject to this prior restraint on their operations. Peoria must enforce its building, health, safety, and fire codes in an evenhanded manner and cannot selectively enforce them against a bookstore because of the content of the books that it sells. 36 For the reasons stated in Part VI-C, supra, we hold the compliance requirement unconstitutional insofar as it relates to matters other than compliance with the zoning provisions of the adult use ordinance. 59 Plaintiff owners are sufficiently affected by subsections (c) and (d) to have a personal stake in the outcome of an attack on their validity, even absent allegations that licenses would be denied to any plaintiff owner because of the provisions. Among other things, subsections (c) and (d) would make it more difficult for the owners to sell their interests in their adult bookstores, would present a continuing threat of loss of license in the event of future conviction of one of the specified offenses, and would subject the owners to the investigative and information disclosure requirements earlier discussed in Parts VI-D and VI-E-1 of this opinion, supra. Plaintiffs therefore have Article III standing. 60 We also believe that, as a discretionary matter, plaintiffs have standing to attack the provisions in subsections (c) and (d). The provisions present a real and substantial threat of chilling protected speech by persons convicted of certain past crimes or wrongs. Accordingly, plaintiffs may assert the interests of persons not now before the court in their attack on the validity of these provisions. 37 61 The provisions in question may be summarized as follows: anyone convicted during the preceding four years of any felony, any prostitution-related offense, any obscenity-related offense, or any offense opposed to decency and morality cannot operate an adult bookstore in Peoria; anyone who has ever possessed a Peoria massage parlor or liquor license that has been revoked for cause is also forbidden to operate an adult bookstore in Peoria. The provisions thus totally prohibit certain classes of persons from selling in Peoria books that are protected by the First Amendment. 62 The freedom to operate a bookstore is unquestionably protected by the First Amendment. Preservation of freedom of expression requires protection of the means of disseminating expression. Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 58 S.Ct. 666, 82 L.Ed. 949 (1938); see Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 64-65 n.6, 83 S.Ct. 631, 636 n.6, 9 L.Ed.2d 584 (1963); see also Times Film Corp. v. City of Chicago, 365 U.S. 43, 56 n.3, 81 S.Ct. 391, 398 n.6, 5 L.Ed.3d 403 (1961) (Warren, C. J., dissenting); cf. Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630, 40 S.Ct. 17, 22, 63 L.Ed. 1173 (1919) (Holmes, J., joined by Brandeis, J., dissenting). We do not understand the city to contend otherwise. 63 As previously noted, the only record support for the city's position that it has a substantial and legitimate interest in denying those convicted of the specified crimes or offenses the freedom to operate an adult bookstore is found in the preamble to the ordinance. That document recites an interest in protecting minors and city neighborhoods from the deleterious effects of adult bookstores and other adult uses, which are said to result particularly when adult uses are congregated. 38 The provisions in question have nothing to do with the scatter zoning purpose of the ordinance and cannot be supported by reference to that purpose. 64 Counsel for Peoria has argued that one of the deleterious effects caused by adult uses is an increase in crime, that those who have committed past crimes or offenses are more likely to commit them again, and that the prohibitions of the ordinance will, by keeping the past offender and the adult use separate, cause a decrease in crime and ordinance violations. Nothing in the preamble or elsewhere in the slender record supports these contentions, and they are not the sort of which we may take judicial notice. We find nothing in Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., supra, to support counsel's argument. 39 Thus, even if we were to assume that proper proof of counsel's contentions would legitimize the broad prior restraint on First Amendment freedoms that the ordinance seeks to impose, 40 defendants have failed to produce such proof. The city is required, at the very least, to demonstrate the existence of a substantial and legitimate state interest that is unrelated to the suppression of free expression and that cannot be effectuated by means that impact less drastically on protected freedoms. 41 No element of the required showing has been made. We affirm the judgment of the district court holding subsections (c) and (d) invalid as unconstitutional prior restraints on speech.