Opinion ID: 2975704
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Plaintiffs’ First Amendment Challenge

Text: In rejecting the plaintiffs’ First Amendment claim, the district court relied on New York State Liquor Authority v. Bellanca, 452 U.S. 714, 715 (1981) and California v. LaRue, 409 U.S. 109 (1972). D. Ct. Op. at 6, 8. The rationale of these cases was that under the authority granted to the states in the Twenty-first Amendment to regulate liquor sales, a state could prohibit nude dancing in places where liquor is sold. The state relies almost entirely on this reasoning here. Unfortunately for the state, the Supreme Court has entirely abandoned this rationale for upholding regulations that raise First Amendment concerns in places where alcohol is sold. See 44 Liquormart v. Rhode Island, 517 U.S. 484, 516 (1996) (“Without questioning the holding in LaRue, we now disavow its reasoning insofar as it relied on the Twenty-first Amendment. As we explained in a case decided more than a decade after LaRue, although the Twenty-first Amendment limits the effect of the dormant Commerce Clause on a State’s regulatory power over the delivery or use of intoxicating 5 Latin is a dead language anyway. No. 06-1436 Hamilton’s Bogarts, Inc., et al. v. State of Michigan, et al. Page 6 beverages within its borders, ‘the Amendment does not license the States to ignore their obligations under other provisions of the Constitution.’ . . . . Accordingly, we now hold that the Twenty-first Amendment does not qualify the constitutional prohibition against laws abridging the freedom of speech embodied in the First Amendment.”); see also Odle v. Decatur County, 421 F.3d 386, 398 (6th Cir. 2005) (“LaRue’s rationale is no longer good law.”). Because the Bellanca case relied on the same constitutional justifications as LaRue, the subsequent decision in Liquormart abrogated its reasoning as well. In reaffirming the holding of LaRue, the Liquormart Court stated that “the Court has recognized that the States’ inherent police powers provide ample authority to restrict the kind of ‘bacchanalian revelries’ described in the LaRue opinion regardless of whether alcoholic beverages are involved.” 517 U.S. at 515. Thus, a state is allowed implement restrictions on nude dancing to combat the “secondary effects” that are likely to arise from the combination of liquor and nude dancing. See City of Erie v. Pap’s A.M., 529 U.S. 277, 293, 296-97 (2000). Although liquor consumption may well be a valid factor in a state’s consideration of secondary effects, it is no longer correct to argue that the Twenty-first Amendment provides greater authority to regulate expressive conduct wherever liquor is sold.
The Supreme Court has stated that “nude dancing . . . is expressive conduct,” while nudity itself is not. Id. at 289. As a result, laws that limit nude dancing are subject to First Amendment scrutiny under one of two alternative standards of review. If “the governmental purpose in enacting the regulation is unrelated to the suppression of expression,” then the law need only satisfy the intermediate scrutiny inquiry from United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968). Pap’s A.M., 529 U.S. at 289. If, on the other hand, the “government interest is related to the content of the expression, . . . then the regulation falls outside the scope of the O’Brien test and must be justified under a more demanding standard.” Id. Thus, under the Supreme Court’s precedent, the threshold question is whether the regulations here are content based — i.e. are they specifically directed at nude dancing — or do the terms of the regulations target conduct alone. Id. 6 The distinction between content-based and content-neutral regulations is critical to their validity, as it has great bearing on the justifications the state must raise to defend the rules. Where a regulation is content-based, it is “considered presumptively invalid and subject to strict scrutiny.” City of Los Angeles v. Alameda Books, 535 U.S. 425, 434 (2002). To satisfy the strict scrutiny inquiry in the context of the First Amendment “the State must show that its regulation is necessary to serve a compelling state interest and is narrowly drawn to achieve that end.” Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of the N.Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. 105, 118 (1991) (“If 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.”). On the other hand, under Pap’s A.M., content-neutral restrictions must meet the four-part intermediate scrutiny test from O’Brien, which requires a showing that 1) the regulation is within the constitutional power of the government to enact, 2) the regulation furthers an important or substantial government interest, 3) the government interest must be unrelated to the suppression of free expression, and 4) the restriction must be no greater than is essential to the furtherance of the government interest. Pap’s A.M., 529 U.S. at 296-301. 6 The Supreme Court plurality applied this approach in Pap’s A.M. as follows: “The ordinance here, like the statute in Barnes, is on its face a general prohibition on public nudity. By its terms, the ordinance 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.” 529 U.S. at 290 (discussing Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S. 560 (1991) (citations omitted)). No. 06-1436 Hamilton’s Bogarts, Inc., et al. v. State of Michigan, et al. Page 7 Unfortunately, instead of addressing whether the regulations are content-based or contentneutral and articulating any state interest that is furthered by the regulations, the state merely relies on its “broad discretion” under LaRue. As a result of this approach we have very little guidance in analyzing the relevant factors. We do not doubt that it is within the state’s police power to pass a nudity ban, to regulate places where liquor is sold, and to combat secondary effects that might be related to adult entertainment. But we are7 left to guess about the governmental interest at stake and how it is advanced by Rules 9 and 11, not to mention the critical question of which standard governs this case. Assuming arguendo that the lesser standard of intermediate scrutiny applies, it would not be a difficult one to meet, but it is not toothless, and requires some showing of an important or substantial interest that the regulations are essential to address. Turner Broad. Sys. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 664 (1994) (“When the Government defends a regulation on speech as a means to redress past harms or prevent anticipated harms, it must do more than simply ‘posit the existence of the disease sought to be cured.’ It must demonstrate that the recited harms are real, not merely conjectural, and that the regulation will in fact alleviate these harms in a direct and material way.” (citation omitted)). Yet not only does the state fail to produce any evidence regarding secondary effects or the impact of its rule, but it fails to even articulate what its interest is or how the regulations affect it. There are alternative, valid reasons to view the regulations in question here under either standard, but we need not address this threshold question because the state has advanced no relevant governmental interest and made no showing as to how Rules 9 and 11 advance such an interest. The Rules therefore cannot survive either strict or intermediate scrutiny. Accordingly, because the plaintiffs have made the requisite showing of success on the merits, a preliminary injunction should issue.