Opinion ID: 76258
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Young v. American Mini-Theatres

Text: 14 In Young v. American Mini Theatres, 427 U.S. 50, 96 S.Ct. 2440, 49 L.Ed.2d 310 (1976), the Court recognized for the first time that regulations of adult entertainment could be justified with reference to its negative effects on the surrounding community. The Court upheld portions of a Detroit Anti-Skid Row zoning ordinance that required adult movie theaters and bookstores to be dispersed throughout limited portions of the city but did not ban them entirely. 7 However, although a majority of the Court agreed that the zoning ordinance was constitutional, no single rationale for the decision enjoyed the assent of five Justices. 15 The plurality opinion, written by Justice Stevens, held that the sexually explicit expression being regulated by the ordinance, though not altogether unprotected, was of lower value than core, political speech. See Young, 427 U.S. at 70, 96 S.Ct. 2440 (plurality opinion) (characterizing society's interest in protecting this type of expression as of a wholly different, and lesser, magnitude than the interest in untrammeled political debate.). The plurality concluded that the zoning ordinance constituted nothing more than a limitation on the place where adult films may be exhibited that was justified by the city's interest in preserving the character of its neighborhoods. Id. at 71, 96 S.Ct. 2440. 16 Justice Powell, who provided the fifth vote necessary to sustain the ordinance, rejected the plurality's view that nonobscene, erotic materials may be treated differently under [the] First Amendment. Id. at 73 n. 1, 96 S.Ct. 2440 (Powell, J., concurring). Unlike the plurality, Justice Powell analyzed the constitutionality of the zoning ordinance under the four-part test outlined in United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968). O'Brien was not an adult entertainment case but involved a Vietnam-era war protester who claimed that the act of burning a draft card was constitutionally protected expression. Rejecting his claim, the O'Brien Court held that government regulation of expressive conduct is sufficiently justified if (1) it is within the constitutional power of the Government; (2) it furthers an important or substantial governmental interest; (3) the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression; and (4) the incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest. O'Brien, 391 U.S. at 376-377, 88 S.Ct. 1673. Applying this test to the Detroit zoning ordinance, Justice Powell found that the ordinance was justified because (1) the ordinance was within the power of the Detroit Common Council to enact; (2) the interests furthered by this ordinance are both important and substantial, since [w]ithout stable neighborhoods... large sections of a modern city quickly can deteriorate into an urban jungle with tragic consequences to social, environmental, and economic values; (3) Detroit has not embarked on an effort to suppress free expression; and (4) based on the evidence presented to the council, the degree of incidental encroachment upon such expression was the minimum necessary to further the purpose of the ordinance. Young, 427 U.S. at 80-82, 96 S.Ct. 2440. 17 Unlike the four dissenters, who found the Detroit zoning ordinance to be content-based, and thus discerned in the Court's holding a drastic departure from established principles of First Amendment law, id. at 84, 96 S.Ct. 2440 (Stewart, J., dissenting), Justice Stevens and Justice Powell agreed that the ordinance was unrelated to the suppression of expression. Although they evaluated the ordinance under different standards, Justices Stevens and Powell also agreed that the ordinance was justified in part by the city's interest in protecting its neighborhoods against certain negative effects associated with adult entertainment. See 427 U.S. at 71, n. 34, 96 S.Ct. 2440 (plurality opinion) (noting that the city enacted the ordinance because a concentration of `adult' movie theaters causes the area to deteriorate and become a focus of crime, adding it is this secondary effect which these zoning ordinances attempt to avoid, not the dissemination of `offensive' speech.); id. at 83, n. 6, 96 S.Ct. 2440 (Powell, J., concurring) (We have here merely a decision by the city to treat certain movie theaters differently because they have markedly different effects upon their surroundings.). In Young, therefore, a majority of Justices endorsed, for the first time, the notion that zoning ordinances impacting sexually explicit adult entertainment could be justified with reference to its unwanted secondary effects.