Opinion ID: 2265911
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: unlike the ordinance in erie, the statute by its own terms strategically taxes protected expression and is therefore a content-based tax

Text: ¶ 63 The Tax imposes a ten percent gross receipts tax on sexually explicit businesses. Utah Code Ann. § 59-27-103 (2008). It defines a sexually explicit business as a business at which any nude or partially denuded individual . . . performs any service . . . on the premises of the sexually explicit business. . . during at least 30 consecutive or nonconsecutive days within a calendar year for profit or compensation. Id. § 59-271-02(4). ¶ 64 Both parties agree that the nudity at issue, nude dancing, is afforded some First Amendment protection. Plaintiffs argue that the Tax is a content-based burden subject to strict scrutiny. The Commission contends that the Tax is aimed at secondary effects and is thus subject to intermediate scrutiny. Plaintiffs are correct. ¶ 65 The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects artistic expression, which includes nude dancing. In Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., the Supreme Court of the United States concluded, by way of plurality, that nude dancing is entitled to some level of First Amendment protection. 501 U.S. 560, 566 (1991) (Rehnquist, C.J., O'Connor, J., and Kennedy, J., plurality) ([N]ude dancing of the kind sought to be performed here is expressive conduct within the outer perimeters of the First Amendment . . . .); id. at 581 (Souter, J., concurring) ([A]n interest in freely engaging in the nude dancing at issue here is subject to a degree of First Amendment protection.); id. at 592 (White, J., Marshall, J., Blackmun, J., and Stevens J., dissenting) (The nudity is itself an expressive component of the dance . . . .). ¶ 66 This First Amendment protection of nude dancing is clear. It does not dissipate in the face of majority opinion or government decree. See United States v. Playboy Entm't Group, 529 U.S. 803, 818 (2000). Nor is it lessened because the expression is not very important, shabby, offensive, or even ugly. Id. at 826. Indeed, [i]f there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 414 (1989). ¶ 67 Because nude dancing is protected expression, a regulation that burdens such expression by reference to its content is a content-based regulation. See R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 382 (1992). For example, in Playboy Entertainment, the Court evaluated a statute designed to restrict children's viewing of sexually explicit programming. 529 U.S. at 806-10. The Court determined that [t]he speech in question is defined by its content; and the statute which seeks to restrict it is content-based. 529 U.S. at 811. The statute is not justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). It focuses only on the content of the speech and the direct impact that speech has on its listeners. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). ¶ 68 The Tax is a content-based regulation. It applies solely based on the narrow content of the business activity, namely, whether it involves nudity. While the Commission argues that the Tax could be applied conceptually to any type of business, this purported expansive reach does not make it content neutral. Just the opposite is true: it applies to exotic dancing but not to traditional ballet, an art exhibit, or a theatrical performance. In short, it is the content of expression that triggers the Tax. ¶ 69 Further, the Tax cannot be considered content neutral in spite of the majority's heavy reliance on City of Erie v. Pap's A.M., 529 U.S. 277 (2000). While the plurality in that case found the ordinance banning all public nudity to be content neutral, it did so according to the general applicability of the terms of the ordinance. Id. at 290; id. at 307-08 (Scalia, J., concurring). That ordinance, [b]y its terms . . . regulates conduct alone. It does not target nudity that contains an erotic message; rather, it bans all public nudity, regardless of whether that nudity is accompanied by expressive activity. Id. at 290 (emphases added). ¶ 70 The Tax, in contrast, by its terms, creates a strategic burden by limiting its application to those sexually explicit businesses at which nude or partially nude employees perform during at least 30 consecutive or nonconsecutive days within a calendar year. Utah Code Ann. § 59-27-102(4)(b) (2008). Meanwhile, other businesses, such as theaters, art galleries, or dance companies, are allowed to continue their expressive activity without disruption. ¶ 71 The majority discounts this thirty-day trigger as analogous to the preamble in Erie, which Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice O'Connor, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Breyer regarded as the mere expression of the city council without any legal effect and which could be construed to combat the negative secondary effects listed within the preamble. See 529 U.S. at 290-91. But here it is the text of the law itself, not a preamble, that contains the thirty-day limitation and thereby, as its title and terms indicate, targets sexually explicit businesses. And, despite the majority's attempt to characterize this case as a carbon copy of Erie, there is no other reasonable interpretation of the thirty-day limitation. Unlike the preamble in Erie, the text of the law does not identify any secondary effects nor does it support, as the majority construes it, a balancing of the state interest in providing sex offender treatment against the incidental burdens imposed on protected expression. Therefore, this case is not like Erie, where [t]here [was] no basis for the contention that the ordinance d[id] not apply to nudity in theatrical productions such as Equus or Hair because the ordinance's text contain[ed] no such limitation. Id. at 308 (Scalia, J., concurring). Rather, the thirty-day limitation found in the text of the Tax makes it a content-based tax. ¶ 72 Indeed, if the Tax were truly content neutral, it would resemble the tax analyzed by the Colorado Court of Appeals in Cinamerica Theatres, L.P. v. City of Boulder, 50 P.3d 921 (Colo. Ct. App. 2002). That tax applies to all places or events . . . regardless whether the activity involves protected speech and regardless of content, and taxes businesses and events as diverse as Broadway-style dinner theater, live striptease and nude dancing, music concerts and live performances, theatrical performances, radio shows, ballet performances, dance parties, fundraising events, bars and nightclubs, and foot races. Id. at 926, 928-29. Such a tax does not affect a limited range of views and does not threaten to suppress the expression of particular ideas or viewpoints. Id. at 929. (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). ¶ 73 Instead, the Tax before us treats businesses differently in reference to the content of the expression involved and does so under the guise of a thirty-day limitation, or in other words, a de facto exemption for the more accepted forms of expression involving nudity. As Justice Kennedy explained in his concurrence in City of Los Angeles v. Alameda Books, Inc., [T]he ordinance in Renton treat[ed] theaters that specialize in adult films differently from other kinds of theaters. The fiction that this sort of ordinance is content neutralor `content neutral'is perhaps more confusing than helpful. . . . These ordinances are content based and we should call them so. 535 U.S. 425, 448 (2002) (second alteration in original) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). ¶ 74 Therefore, despite the majority's analysis of the Tax under Erie, and without resort to the statements made by legislators in enacting the Tax, the Tax is not one of general applicability that regulates conduct alone. Rather, the Tax, by its terms, targets sexually explicit businesses that feature for thirty or more days per year the constitutionally protected expressive activity of nude dancing. Because it does so, I would hold that the Tax is content based and thus subject to strict scrutiny.