Opinion ID: 2978572
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Buttocks; and

Text: (iv) Female breasts below a point immediately above the top of the areola; and (B) Human male genitals in a discernibly turgid state, even if completely opaquely covered; Tenn. Code Ann. § 7-51-1102(24). No. 08-5494 Entertainment Prod., et al. v. Shelby County, Page 16 Tenn., et al. Second, Plaintiffs point out that a wide range of expressive conduct suffices to bring a performance or display within the scope of “adult entertainment.” Appellants’ Br. at 39. The themes that bring a performance under the umbrella of “adult entertainment,” Plaintiffs insist, include those that do not describe erotic adult entertainment exclusively but are also characteristic of mainstream artistic expression. At the preliminary injunction hearing, Plaintiffs presented the testimony of Dr. Judith Hanna, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Maryland, who testified that there are “unlimited numbers” of “recognized performances” outside the adult-entertainment setting, whose predominant themes include nudity, simulated sex, and erotic touching between performers, and therefore, fit the definition of “adult entertainment.”10 Plaintiffs further submit that each of the expressive activities listed – including “pantomime,” “modeling,” or “any other personal services offered customers” – suffices on its own to classify a performance as adult entertainment, so long as that activity constitutes a principal or predominant theme of the performance. Entertainment would be “adult,” they argue, even if the removal of some articles of clothing, pantomime act, or modeling at issue did not involve “specified sexual activities” or the exhibition of “specified anatomical areas.” In sum, Plaintiffs argue that the content of an individual performance determines whether or not the Act is applicable to an establishment staging that performance. As a consequence, numerous mainstream artistic venues that contemplate including in their program even a single film, opera, ballet, or dance performance that fits the letter of the “adult entertainment” definition, are likely to be chilled from engaging in protected expression. 10 Dr. Hanna offered numerous examples of ballet, dance, dramatic, and operatic performances, whose predominant themes conform to the principal or predominant themes listed in the definition of “adult entertainment,” such as nudity, simulated sex, and touching between performers. In addition to performances frequently cited in similar law suits such as Oh, Calcutta!, Salomé, and Hair, Dr. Hanna identified and described, inter alia, the following: George Balanchine’s Prodigal Son ballet, which culminates in “an erotic encounter . . . that’s portrayed on stage,” involving “touching of the body”; Balanchine’s Bugak[u], whose main theme is erotic, and which culminates in a consummation of marriage; a ballet, Mutations, and dance performances, Map Me and Untitled, that are performed in the nude; as well as a number of others. No. 08-5494 Entertainment Prod., et al. v. Shelby County, Page 17 Tenn., et al. Were Plaintiffs’ performance-based interpretation of the Act’s scope the only plausible reading, the Act would be overly broad on its face. If “adult entertainment” sweeps in mainstream artistic performances and if the presentation of a single performance suffices to subject an establishment to the Tennessee Act, then the Act applies to precisely the set of establishments that doomed the statutes noted earlier, which were invalidated by this and other circuit courts. See Odle, 371 F.3d at 399; Triplett Grille, 40 F.3d at 136; Conchatta Inc., 458 F.3d at 266; Carandola, Ltd., 303 F.3d at 516; Ways, 274 F.3d at 519.11 Facial invalidation is still inappropriate, however, if the statute is “readily subject to a narrowing construction by the state courts,” Erznoznik v. Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205, 216 (1975). “The key to application of th[e] [narrowing construction] principle is that the statute must be ‘readily susceptible’ to the limitation; we will not rewrite a state law to conform it to constitutional requirements.” American Booksellers Ass’n, 484 U.S. at 397. While we will not rewrite a state or local law, neither will we “assume that state courts would broaden the reach of a statute by giving it an ‘expansive construction.’” Richland Bookmart v. Nichols, 137 F.3d 435, 441 (6th Cir. 1998). And, as we noted in the context of a related Tennessee statute, the presumption that state courts will favor the narrower of two plausible constructions “is consistent with Tennessee law that provides that such regulation of speech should be construed narrowly.” Ibid. (citing Davis-Kidd Booksellers, Inc. v. McWherter, 866 S.W.2d 520, 526 (Tenn. 1993)). Defendants put forth an alternative construction of the challenged provisions and reject Plaintiffs’ claim that the Act sets up a performance-based standard for regulating adult-oriented businesses. The second part of the “adult-oriented establishment” 11 As noted supra at 8–9 and as we explained in Odle, a law is overbroad because it fails to “except ‘mainstream’ artistic or entertainment venues,” where protected expression that is “unlikely to spawn harmful secondary effects” is presented – not because it fails to except other public places where no protected expression is featured. 421 F.3d at 396; see also Giovani Carandola, Ltd. v. Bason, 303 F.3d 507, 516 (4th Cir. 2002) (explaining that a North Carolina statute was overbroad not because it applied to many sites “far beyond bars and nude dancing establishments,” but because it applied specifically to sites where mainstream artistic expression commonly takes place). Thus, the fact that the Act now before us purports to apply only to public venues that provide “adult entertainment” – and not to all public places or all venues that sell liquor – does not mean that this Act threatens fewer potentially impermissible applications than did the statutes in Odle or Carandola. No. 08-5494 Entertainment Prod., et al. v. Shelby County, Page 18 Tenn., et al. definition, Defendants argue, should not be read to mean that an isolated presentation of “adult entertainment” suffices to subject a business to the Act’s regulation. Instead, the last clause, beginning with “or wherein” should be read as modifying “booths, cubicles, rooms, compartments or stalls,” rather than “premises.” Appellees’ Br. at 28-9. Shelby County would read the provision as follows: Further, “adult-oriented establishment” means [1] any premises to which the public patrons or members are invited or admitted and that are so physically arranged as to provide booths, cubicles, rooms, compartments or stalls separate from the common areas of the premises [2A] for the purpose of viewing adult-oriented motion pictures, or [2B] wherein an entertainer provides adult entertainment to a member of the public, a patron or a member, when such adult entertainment is held, conducted, operated or maintained for a profit, direct or indirect. That is, providing “adult entertainment” [2B] will only make an establishment “adult-oriented” if entertainment is conducted in some kind of compartments separated from the common area [1]. This reading considerably reduces, if not completely eliminates, the alleged regulatory burden on mainstream artistic performances, since such are not commonly conducted on premises with the specified interior arrangement. We have noted that a limiting or narrowing construction of statutory language is sustainable when “an express exception in the law’s text or other specific language made the law ‘readily susceptible’” to such a construction. Odle, 421 F.3d at 396-97 (emphasis added). This Act does not have an “express exception” for performances that have serious artistic value or establishments devoted principally to offering such performances. Cf. Farkas v. Miller, 151 F.3d 900, 902 (8th Cir. 1998). However, the Act does contain “specific language” that lends itself to two meanings. We agree with Plaintiffs that Defendants’ narrowing construction is the less grammatical of the two plausible interpretations of the language. We disagree, however, with the proposition that grammatical inelegance makes an interpretation unfair or unsustainable. Nor does the proposed narrowing construction require this court to trample on the principles of federalism by “rewriting” a state law. On the contrary, principles of federalism lead us No. 08-5494 Entertainment Prod., et al. v. Shelby County, Page 19 Tenn., et al. to take seriously the declaration of Tennessee courts that regulations of speech are to be construed narrowly. See Richland Bookmart, 137 F.3d at 441(citing Davis-Kidd Booksellers, Inc., 866 S.W.2d at 526). We have explained that it would “be improper for this Court to supply limiting language . . . in order to preserve [a law’s] constitutionality.” Triplett Grille, 40 F.3d at 136 (emphasis added). The Tennessee Act does not compel us to “supply” limiting language. At most, it requires that we treat the comma between “pictures” and “or wherein” as a drafting oversight, of the kind that would normally be remedied by enclosing it in brackets and denoting it with “sic.”12 Absent any other textual signals that the comma was intended to broaden the reach of the Act, there is no rule of law that compels us to assert the strictest tenets of English grammar over the demonstrable intent of the legislators.13 The central inquiry in overbreadth analysis is whether protected expression will be burdened by the actual enforcement of the Act or chilled by virtue of its sheer presence on the books. With regard to the former, we are persuaded that the risk of actual enforcement of the Act against mainstream artistic establishments is quite low: unlike the lawmakers of Akron in Triplett Grille, 40 F.3d at 131, and Decatur County in Odle, 421 F.3d at 396, who conceded that their regulatory schemes applied to mainstream artistic performances, Tennessee and Shelby County disavow such a broad reading of this Act, see Appellees’ Br. at 38–39.14 With regard to the latter risk, we seriously doubt that operators of any mainstream artistic venue are likely to scrutinize the provisions of a regulatory scheme aimed at “adult-oriented businesses,” conclude 12 As we do with statutory language routinely. See, e.g., DLS, Inc. v. City of Chattanooga, 107 F.3d 403, 406 (6th Cir. 1997); Cobb v. Contract Transp., Inc., 452 F.3d 543, 558 (6th Cir. 2006). 13 Indeed, established principles of statutory construction counsel that “the strict language” of a statute yields to “the intention of the drafters,” should that intention be “demonstrably at odds” with the results obtained by strict interpretation. United States v. Ron Pair Enters., 489 U.S. 235, 242 (1989) (quoting Griffin v. Oceanic Contractors, Inc., 458 U.S. 564, 571 (1982)). 14 Cases of overzealous enforcement against mainstream artistic venues, moreover, would and should invite litigation by the affected parties on an as-applied basis. New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 773–74 (1982) (stating that when overbreadth is not substantial, “whatever overbreadth may exist should be cured through case-by-case analysis of the fact situations to which [a law’s] sanctions, assertedly, may not be applied”) (quoting Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601 (1973)); see also N.Y. State Club Ass’n v. City of New York, 487 U.S. 1, 14 (1988). No. 08-5494 Entertainment Prod., et al. v. Shelby County, Page 20 Tenn., et al. that the scheme will require their venues to obtain a license if certain performances are offered, and be thereby deterred from staging Salomé, Prodigal Son, or Bugaku – on the basis of a single comma. We think that the definition of “adult-oriented establishment” is “readily susceptible” to the narrowing construction that Defendants advocate. We recognize that this does not automatically address the second problem with the definition of “adult entertainment” – the apparent self-sufficiency of a predominant emphasis on “pantomime,” “modeling,” or “any other personal service offered customers” to transform a performance or exhibition into “adult entertainment.” “[T]he risk that this definition might chill a range of protected speech” may have led us “to find it unconstitutionally overbroad if it stood alone.” Deja Vu of Nashville, Inc., 274 F.3d at 388 (emphasis added). If we read “adult entertainment” in conjunction with the narrowly construed definition of “adult-oriented establishment,” the hypothesized unconstitutional applications dwindle in number, if not disappear. One cannot readily imagine a non-adult modeling session or non-erotic pantomime performance taking place in individualized booths anymore than one can imagine Balanchine’s ballets screened routinely in such a setting. The domain of expressive activities triggering the “adult entertainment” label may be limited in yet another manner. In two decisions analyzing the Tennessee Act, a federal district court found that the definition of “adult entertainment” is not overbroad when the clause “any other personal service offered customers” is read in context. “The phrase read in context of the entire definition clearly pertains and is limited to that entertainment ‘which has a significant or substantial portion of such performance, any actual or simulated performance of specified sexual activities or exhibition and viewing of specified anatomical areas.” Belew, et al. v. Giles County Adult-Oriented Establishment Board, et al., No. 1-01-0139, slip op. at  (M.D. Tenn. Sept. 30, 2005) (emphasis added); Friedman, et al. v. Giles County Adult-Oriented Establishment Board, et al., No. 1-00-0065 (M.D. Tenn. Sept. 29, 2005). We find that this is a sensible way to interpret all of the expressive activities contained in the “adult entertainment” No. 08-5494 Entertainment Prod., et al. v. Shelby County, Page 21 Tenn., et al. definition, which may appear devoid of sexually explicit content in isolation (i.e., removal of indeterminate articles of clothing, pantomime, modeling, or other personal services). Following “the commonsense canon of noscitur a sociis – which counsels that a word is given more precise content by the neighboring words with which it is associated,” Williams, 128 S. Ct. at 1839, these activities constitute “adult entertainment” only when they implicate “specified sexual activities” or “specified anatomical areas.”15 We find that the Tennessee Act is readily susceptible to a narrowing construction that would clearly except mainstream artistic venues from the licensing and regulatory scheme. Because we find it improbable that any performances of serious artistic value qualifying as “adult entertainment” would be staged in individualized booths, the number of ostensibly impermissible applications of the Act is negligible and does not rise to the level of real and substantial overbreadth. The district court did not err, therefore, in denying the preliminary injunction on the basis that Plaintiffs did not demonstrate a substantial likelihood of success in their challenges to the definitions of “adult cabaret,” “adult-oriented establishment,” and “adult entertainment.”