Court Opinion

ID: 9428385
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:35.884086+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:13.206195
License: Public Domain

Justice Powell,
with whom Justice Stewart joins,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion as I agree that Mount Ephraim has failed altogether to justify its broad restriction of protected expression. This is not to say, however, that some communities are not free — by a more carefully drawn ordinance — to regulate or ban all commercial public entertainment. In my opinion, such an ordinance could be appropriate and valid in a residential community where all commercial activity is excluded. Similarly, a residential community should be able to limit commercial establishments to essential “neighborhood” services permitted in a narrowly zoned area.
But the Borough of Mount Ephraim failed to follow these paths. The ordinance before us was not carefully drawn and, as the Court points out, it is sufficiently overinclusive and underinclusive that any argument about the need to maintain the residential nature of this community fails as a justification.