Opinion ID: 47
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Proper Time-Frame for Evaluating Adequacy

Text: The primary question we face here is which set of alternatives must we evaluate: those available at the time an ordinance is passed, or those available at the time it is challenged? We hold that, in assessing the adequacy of alternative sites left open by a zoning ordinance, courts must consider the adequacy of alternatives available at the time the ordinance is challenged. This evaluation should account for circumstances as they exist at the time the court issues its judgment, or as close as is practicable to that time in light of the need for discovery and the presentation of evidence, as managed by the district court. We reach this conclusion because we believe that the First Amendment does not allow courts to ignore post-enactment, extralegal changes and the impact they have on the sufficiency of alternative avenues of communication. The alternatives available when a statute is passed can disappear, thus decreasing the adequacy of alternative sites actually available to would-be speakers. See Topanga Press, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, 989 F.2d 1524,-1532 (9th Cir.1993) (Land under the ocean, airstrips of international airports, [etc.] ... are not relocation sites likely to ever become available to the Adult Businesses, or indeed to any commercial business.). Conversely, if a municipality opens up new land to development, the availability of alternative sites might very well increase, and thereby expand speakers' options, thus rendering constitutional zoning ordinances previously enacted. And even something as simple as growth in a community's population may be relevant to the adequacy of available sites. See David Vincent, Inc. v. Broward County, Fla., 200 F.3d 1325, 1336 (11th Cir. 2000) (suggesting that a community's population and size be considered among the factors relevant to the inquiry). Our holding requires no more than that the First Amendment inquiry be attuned to these realities. [6] While our holding is not specifically established by existing caselaw addressing either adult entertainment zoning or time, place, and manner restrictions, we conclude that it is fully grounded in the approaches taken by the Supreme Court in Young, Renton, and their progeny. These cases focus on the practical and continuing impact of zoning regulations on adult entertainment uses as applied, rather than on their facial constitutionality when passed. In Renton, for example, the Supreme Court specifically noted that no adult uses existed in the city at the time the ordinance was passed. 475 U.S. at 44, 106 S.Ct. 925. A year later, however, the plaintiffs acquired two theaters and intended to use them to show adult films. Id. at 45, 106 S.Ct. 925. If the only question had been whether the challenged ordinance permitted adequate alternatives at the time it was passed, Renton would have virtually been a non-casebecause there were no adult establishments in existence when the ordinance was passed, the ordinance could not have unconstitutionally limited them as of that time. The Court, of course, did not take this easy route, but rather evaluated the availability of alternatives at some date subsequent to enactment (precisely which date is unclear from the opinion). In doing so, the Court explained that the First Amendment requires only that Renton refrain from effectively denying respondents a reasonable opportunity to open and operate an adult theater within the city. Id. at 54, 106 S.Ct. 925 (emphasis added); see also Boss Capital, Inc. v. City of Casselberry, 187 F.3d 1251, 1254 (11th Cir.1999) (holding that, in evaluating adequacy, courts may consider the community's population and size, the acreage available to adult businesses as a percentage of the overall size, the location of available sites, the number of adult businesses already in existence, and the number of adult entertainment establishments wanting to operate in [the community] in the future), abrogated on other grounds by City of Littleton, Colo. v. Z.J. Gifts D-4, L.L.C., 541 U.S. 774, 124 S.Ct. 2219, 159 L.Ed.2d 84 (2004). Such an inquiry would not make sense unless future impactin so far as it required courts to consider the effect of the ordinance on adult businesses that have opened or might open after the ordinance was enactedis constitutionally relevant. Moreover, the Renton Court repeatedly phrased its inquiry in the present tense, thereby suggesting that it considered the significant time to be that of the challenge, not of the law's passage: The appropriate inquiry in this case, then, is whether the Renton ordinance is designed to serve a substantial governmental interest and allows for reasonable alternative avenues of communication. Id. at 50, 106 S.Ct. 925 (emphasis added); see also id. at 53, 106 S.Ct. 925 (same); id. at 54, 106 S.Ct. 925 ([W]e have cautioned against the enactment of zoning regulations that have the effect of suppressing, or greatly restricting access to, lawful speech, .... (internal quotation marks omitted)). We recognize, however, that not all courts have read Renton in this way, and that our holding appears to conflict with that of at least one other courtthe United States District Court for the District of Maryland, on whose decision the District Court in this case relied. In Bigg Wolf Discount Video Movie Sales, Inc. v. Montgomery County, Md., 256 F.Supp.2d 385 (D.Md.2003), the Maryland court concluded that [a]lthough many courts have not explicitly said so, most have logically analyzed the number of available sites in relation to the number of adult businesses that would need to relocate at the time the ordinance was passed. Id. at 397. And language in a case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit suggests a similar approach. In Daytona Grand, Inc. v. City of Daytona Beach, Fla., 490 F.3d 860 (11th Cir.2007), the court stated that [a] new zoning regime must leave adult businesses with a `reasonable opportunity to relocate,' and `the number of sites available for adult businesses under the new zoning regime must be greater than or equal to the number of adult businesses in existence at the time the new zoning regime takes effect.' Id. at 870 ( quoting Fly Fish, Inc. v. City of Cocoa Beach, 337 F.3d 1301, 1310-11 (11th Cir.2003)). We believe that these cases hold no more than that courts should in the ordinary course consider the adequacy of alternative sites available when an ordinance was passed. To the extent that these cases suggest that courts should only consider the adequacy of alternatives existing at the time of an ordinance's passage, we disagree. The adequacy of sites left available by an ordinance at the time of its passage may be relevant to its constitutionality, and nothing in our opinion today should be read as holding to the contrary. (That issue is not before us.) But whether or not it is constitutionally necessary in some circumstances for an ordinance to preserve adequate alternatives at the time of passage, it is not constitutionally sufficient. In addition to relying on the above-mentioned Maryland and Eleventh Circuit cases, the District Court stated that our Circuit has implicitly found that the appropriate date for assessment of proposed alternative avenues of communication is the date of enactment. TJS, 2008 WL 2079044, at . We disagree. The District Court based its conclusion on our favorable citation, in Hickerson, 146 F.3d 99, to (a) Town of Islip v. Caviglia, 73 N.Y.2d 544, 542 N.Y.S.2d 139, 540 N.E.2d 215 (1989), which in turn noted that there was ample space available for adult uses after the rezoning and that there was no evidence that the number or accessibility of adult bookstores would be diminished, and to (b) Stringfellow's of New York, Ltd. v. City of New York, 91 N.Y.2d 382, 671 N.Y.S.2d 406, 694 N.E.2d 407 (1998), in which the City was required to show sufficient alternative receptor sites to which existing adult uses could relocate. The lower court also pointed out that in Buzzetti, 140 F.3d 134, we upheld an adult entertainment zoning ordinance, which permitted the existing adult entertainment establishments to continue operations but did not require that future adult entertainment establishments would be entitled to open at new locations. TJS, 2008 WL 2079044, at . All that is so. But, of course, none of these cases limits us to considering only the adequacy of alternative sites available at the time an ordinance is passed. The statement in Caviglia (which we approvingly cited in Hickerson ) that the rezoning preserved ample space for adult bookstores and did not lessen their number or accessibility does not imply, much less hold, that a statute must only provide ample alternatives at the time it is passed. Moreover, Hickerson specifically did not address the merits of the petitioners' First Amendment claims. Hickerson, 146 F.3d at 103 (The only question before us is whether the New York courts' rejection of plaintiffs' state constitutional claims forecloses plaintiffs from relitigating, in the form of a First Amendment claim in federal court, the same issues that were resolved against them in state court.) (emphasis added). But even if we were to read the cited language as being a holding, it would not support the District Court's time-of-enactment approach. Indeed, the most natural reading of the phrase after the rezoning would encompass all time periods after the rezoning, not just the date of passage itself. Similarly, in Buzzetti we stated that there can be no doubt on this record that the Zoning Amendment allows for reasonable alternative avenues of communication. 140 F.3d at 140 (internal quotation marks omitted). In support of this conclusion, we cited the district court's finding that [e]leven percent of New York City's total land area remains as permissible locations for adult establishments to operate and concluded: [T]he Zoning Amendment allows for the operation of approximately 500 adult establishments in New York City in comparison to the approximately 177 adult establishments currently operating in the city; accordingly, the Amendment permits all of the City's existing adult establishments to continue to operate in the City, either at their current sites or at new locations. 140 F.3d at 141 (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, if anything, the present tense language of Buzzetti currently operating; existing; continue to operate; new locations like that of Renton, suggests a focus on the present application of the ordinance, not its constitutionality at the time of passage. [7] The District Court also cited the Ninth Circuit's opinion in Topanga Press Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, 989 F.2d 1524 (9th Cir.1993), which the District Court described as holding that the number of sites available must merely be greater than or equal to the number of adult entertainment businesses in existence at the effective date of the ordinance. TJS, 2008 WL 2079044, at  7. We do not so read that opinion. To be sure, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's issuance of a preliminary injunction against the ordinance in part on the basis that the number of sites available under the ordinance would not likely accommodate all of the then-operating adult entertainment businesses. Topanga, 989 F.2d at 1532-33. But the language of Topanga which considered the alternatives available to adult businesses that are now in operationis fully consistent with the approach we take here, which, as we have emphasized, may well permit courts also to consider an ordinance's constitutionally at the time it is passed. Because Topanga found that the challenged ordinance did not provide adequate alternatives at the time it was passed, the court did not find it necessary to consider whether it also failed to provide adequate alternatives at some later date. The fact that the Topanga court chose not to make the latter inquiry, however, in no way means that its decision precluded such an inquiry. In arguing that adequacy should be measured exclusively at the time of the ordinance's enactment, the Town's primary concern seems to be that the rule we endorse here will permit adult entertainment businesses repeatedly to challenge the constitutionality of the same ordinance. In this regard, the Town emphasizes, and the District Court noted, that the Town of Smithtown passed the original ordinance in 1994 and amended it in 2000, and presented a list of alternative sites in 1999 to [TJS's] predecessor. TJS, 2008 WL 2079044, at . TJS, however, did not commence this suit until 2004, upon commencement by the Town of a closure action in State court, and in any event TJS was aware of the nature of the restrictions upon an adult entertainment establishment when he purchased and opened the business. Id. And, the District Court concluded, to ignore the history of the site between the 1994 enactment of the original ordinance and 2003 would reward recalcitrance on [TJS's] part because it would still fail to explain [TJS's] failure to raise specific legitimate objections to the proposed sites over the past five (5) years. Id. We, of course, have no problem with the proposition that the history of 490 West Jericho Turnpike should not be ignore[d]. Giving due regard to that history, however, does not alter the basic inquiry as to whether the challenged ordinance provides adequate alternative sites. Moreover, although the rule we endorse today might in some circumstances open ordinances up to more than one attack, it would only do so if there were significant changes in the surrounding community. And the burden of pleading and proving such charges with particularity could well be put on the plaintiff. See Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007). Furthermore, the implications of the reverse rule would be constitutionally troubling. If the only relevant question were whether an ordinance provided adequate alternatives on the day of its passage, any law that did so would thereafter be immune from First Amendment challenge. And speech that the Supreme Court has held to be protected by that Amendment would be silenced. Conversely, a strict time-of-passage rule might arguably make it impossible for a city to save a constitutionally deficient ordinance: post-enactment remedial measures taken by a city to make alternative sites more available (such as opening new land to development) would, in theory, seem to be just as constitutionally irrelevant as developments limiting the availability of such alternatives. Our holding avoids these perverse results.