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

Heading: The Business of Tattooing

Text: Finally, the fact that the City's ban relates to tattooing businesses rather than the tattooing process itself [5] does not affect whether the activity regulated is protected by the First Amendment. In City of Sparks, we held that even an artist's sale of his original artwork constitutes speech protected under the First Amendment. 500 F.3d at 954 (emphasis added). We first emphasized the inherent expressiveness of the painting itselfin particular, that a painting conveys[the artist's] sense of form, topic, and perspective[,] . . . may express a clear social position . . . [or] the artist's vision of movement and color, . . . [and] holds potential to `affect public attitudes' by spurring thoughtful reflection in and discussion among its viewers. Id. at 956 (citation omitted) (quoting Joseph Burstyn, 343 U.S. at 501, 72 S.Ct. 777). We then rejected the city's argument that [plaintiff's] sale of his paintings removes them from the ambit of protected expression. Id.; see also City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publ'g. Co., 486 U.S. 750, 756 n. 5, 108 S.Ct. 2138, 100 L.Ed.2d 771 (1988) ([T]he degree of First Amendment protection is not diminished merely because the [protected expression] is sold rather than given away.); Riley v. Nat'l Fed'n of the Blind of N.C., Inc., 487 U.S. 781, 801, 108 S.Ct. 2667, 101 L.Ed.2d 669 (1988) (It is well settled that a speaker's rights are not lost merely because compensation is received; a speaker is no less a speaker because he or she is paid to speak.). The Second Circuit reached a similar conclusion in Bery v. City of New York, 97 F.3d 689 (2d Cir.1996), where the court held that the sale of visual artwork is expression fully protected by the First Amendment. Id. at 695. The court rejected the city's argument that, unlike the production of art, the sale of art is conduct and should therefore be subject to Spence 's test. Id. The court held that [t]he sale of protected materials is also protected, id. (citing Lakewood, 486 U.S. at 756 n. 5, 108 S.Ct. 2138), reasoning that without the money, the plaintiffs would not have engaged in the protected expressive activity, id. at 696. City of Sparks and Bery stand for the proposition that because the sale of a painting is intertwined with the process of producing the painting, the sale is entitled to full constitutional protection without any need to resort to the Spence test. The same logic applies to the business of tattooing. Thus, we conclude that the business of tattooing qualifies as purely expressive activity rather than conduct with an expressive component, and is therefore entitled to full constitutional protection without any need to subject it to Spence 's sufficiently imbued test. The business is subject to reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions (as explained in the next section), but the fact that the tattoo is for sale does not deprive it of its First Amendment protection.