Court Opinion

ID: 9743223
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:28:45.829262+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:39.989217
License: Public Domain

Nolan, J.
(dissenting, with whom Lynch, J., joins). What must the muses be thinking when the court once again holds that barroom dancing in the nude is free speech? Terpsichore must be uncomfortable at the jurisprudence which makes her art form “free speech” when performed nude in a cabaret.
Regrettably, the court continues to deny the right of communities to protect themselves from all the dangers that can flow from that mischievous mixture of nudity and alcohol on licensed premises.
I dissent for the reasons stated by Chief Justice Hennessey and Justice Quirico in Commonwealth v. Sees, 374 Mass. 532, *19538, 540 (1978). I do not dispute that conduct as well as speech can communicate ideas and as such may be protected activity under art. 16 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. The activity that the majority finds entitled to the protection of art. 16 is, in this case as well as in Commonwealth v. Sees, supra (which the majority finds controlling), characterized as “nude dancing.” I would concede that the citizens of the Commonwealth have the right, while either clothed or in the nude, to communicate ideas. I would also agree with the court that dancers frequently communicate ideas to their audiences in the course of their performances. However, merely characterizing conduct as dancing is not enough to confer upon such conduct the protections afforded speech by art. 16. I would require something more than a showing that the performer was moving her feet or other portions of her anatomy to the accompaniment of music before conceding that communication between the “dancer” and the audience was taking place.