Opinion ID: 47
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Adult Entertainment, Zoning, and the First Amendment

Text: Over the past few decades, adult entertainment establishments have played a disproportionately prominent role in First Amendment doctrine. Adult entertainment, unlike obscenity, see generally Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498 (1957), has been held by the Supreme Court to be protected by the First Amendment. And yet the High Court has often treated adult entertainment establishments and the activities they support as different from core First Amendment speech. Most notably, the Court has upheld adult entertainment zoning restrictions that would almost certainly be unconstitutional if applied to pure political speech. See Stone et al., The First Amendment 243 (3d ed. 2008) (Presumably, the Court would not uphold a law restricting the location of theaters that show racist or anti-war films.). The differential treatment of adult entertainment establishments goes back at least as far as Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U.S. 50, 96 S.Ct. 2440, 49 L.Ed.2d 310 (1976), in which the Supreme Court upheld zoning ordinances providing that adult theaters could not be located within 1,000 feet of any two other regulated uses, nor within 500 feet of a residential area. The Court concluded that [t]he city's interest in planning and regulating the use of property for commercial purposes is clearly adequate to support that kind of [minimum spacing] restriction applicable to all theaters within the city limits. Id. at 62-63, 96 S.Ct. 2440. The Court therefore held that apart from the fact that the ordinances treat adult theaters differently from other theaters and the fact that the classification is predicated on the content of material shown in the respective theaters, the regulation of the place where such films may be exhibited does not offend the First Amendment. Id. at 63, 96 S.Ct. 2440. A decade later, in a case whose resolution the Court said was largely dictated by Young, the Court held that the First Amendment permits municipal governments to use zoning laws as a means of addressing the secondary effects of adult establishments. City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41, 46, 47-48, 106 S.Ct. 925, 89 L.Ed.2d 29 (1986). Under Renton, local governments may limit the location of adult entertainment establishments in order to prevent crime, protect the city's retail trade, maintain property values, and generally protect and preserve the quality of the city's neighborhoods, commercial districts, and the quality of urban life, [but] not to suppress the expression of unpopular views. Id. at 48, 106 S.Ct. 925 (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, if a zoning ordinance serves a substantial governmental interest and allows for reasonable alternative avenues of communication,  the First Amendment is satisfied. Id. at 50, 106 S.Ct. 925 (emphasis added). It is the latter prong of this test with which we are concerned here. The over-arching legal question in the present case, as in many First Amendment zoning challenges, is whether the challenged zoning ordinance preserves reasonable alternative avenues of communication for adult-oriented businesses. See Buzzetti v. City of New York, 140 F.3d 134, 140-41 (2d Cir.1998) (citing Renton, 475 U.S. at 53-54, 106 S.Ct. 925). In the context of adult entertainment cases, we have held that the reasonableness inquiry requires an assessment of available other locations, Hickerson v. City of New York, 146 F.3d 99, 107-08 (2d Cir.1998), and whether these alternatives afford a reasonable opportunity to locate and operate such a business, Buzzetti, 140 F.3d at 140-41. See also Isbell v. City of San Diego, 258 F.3d 1108, 1112 (9th Cir.2001) (To decide whether constitutionally sufficient alternatives exist, [a court should] first ... determine how many sites are available and then determine whether that number is sufficient to afford adult establishments a reasonable opportunity to locate. (internal citations omitted)). [4] In approaching these inquiries, we look also to the time, place, and manner cases, from which the adult zoning cases descend, and to which they bear a strong family resemblance. See Young, 427 U.S. at 63 & n. 18, 96 S.Ct. 2440 (holding that regulating the location of adult films does not violate the First Amendment, and citing as support the proposition that [r]easonable regulations of the time, place, and manner of protected speech, where those regulations are necessary to further significant governmental interests, are permitted by the First Amendment). Although the two inquiries are not equivalentmost importantly, it is by no means clear whether or how the content-neutrality requirement that is central in time, place, and manner cases applies in adult entertainment zoning cases [5] there are important similarities. This is so because, as with time, place, and manner restrictions, the underlying question in adult zoning cases is whether the challenged restriction leaves open adequate alternative avenues of communication.