Court Opinion

ID: 9614723
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:27:38.733865+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:38.522299
License: Public Domain

Weltner, Justice,
dissenting.
1. OCGA §§ 3-3-40 through 3-3-46 were enacted by the General Assembly “relating to regulation of alcoholic beverages in general, so as to prohibit certain nude and sexual conduct on premises where alcoholic beverages are sold or dispensed for consumption on the premises. . . .” Ga. Laws 1988, p. 212. Entertainment Systems, Inc. operates an establishment known as The Gold Club, where nude dancing is performed while alcoholic beverages are sold for consumption on the premises. Dancers at the Gold Club are styled by the club as “independent contractors.” The club pays them no wages or benefits of any kind. Their sole compensation comes from tips given to them by those customers of the club who approve of their performance.
2. The majority has concluded that the Act was an infringement upon the right of free speech as protected by the Constitution of the State of Georgia. It should be noted, however, that the United States Supreme Court has upheld a statute identical in all material parts to the 1988 Act.1
3. The first Constitution of Georgia, in the year 1777, guaranteed freedom of the press. The 1877 Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech. I cannot believe that our forebears, in writing these protections, intended to vest in each Georgian a constitutional right to dance naked for tips in a barroom. Nor do I think that the citizens of Georgia who ratified the Constitution of 1983 intended to preserve or to create any such “right.”
4. Because the 1988 Act is not invalid for any of the reasons urged by The Gold Club, the injunction prohibiting its enforcement by the state should be vacated.
*706Decided December 5, 1989
Reconsideration denied December 20, 1989.
Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, David A. Runnion, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Grace E. Evans, Assistant Attorney General, for appellant (case no. S89A0297).
Helen A. Roan, Nina M. Radakovich, for appellant (case no. S89A0298).
Groover & Childs, Denmark Groover, Jr., Ellenberg & Bryan, Richard D. Ellenberg, John R. Myer, for appellee.
I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Marshall joins in this dissent.

 California v. LaRue, 409 U. S. 109 (93 SC 390, 34 LE2d 342) (1972). The California statute, as the Georgia statute, applied only to establishments licensed, or required to be licensed, for the sale of alcoholic beverages by the drink, and for consumption on the premises. See also New York State Liquor Auth. v. Bellanca, 452 U. S. 714 (101 SC 2599, 69 LE2d 357) (1981), upholding a similar ban on “topless” dancing in establishments that sell liquor for consumption on the premises.