Court Opinion

ID: 9494709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:44:29.522058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:34.068918
License: Public Domain

CLAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because I would find the Act unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause due to its underinclusiveness, I respectfully dissent. The harmful secondary effects the Act was designed to prevent are just as likely, if not more likely, with the no-nregulated live cabarets as they are with the regulated adult bookstores. Thus, the Acts’s exemption of the live cabarets from its operating-hour restrictions leads to the conclusion that the Tennessee legislature has made an impermissible distinction on the basis of the content of the regulated speech.
“[T]he notion that a regulation of speech may be impermissibly underinclusive is firmly grounded in First Amendment principles.” City of Ladue v. Gilleo, 512 U.S. 43, 51, 114 S.Ct. 2038, 129 L.Ed.2d 36 (1994) (emphasis in original). Indeed, this Court has recognized that “in some cases, the underinclusiveness of a law-i.e., the failure of the government to regulate other, similar activity-may give rise to a conclusion that the government has in fact made an impermissible distinction on the basis of the content of the regulated speech.” DLS, Inc. v. City of Chattanooga, 107 F.3d 403, 411 (6th Cir.1997). The DLS Court was not persuaded that the city ordinance in question was “one of those eases[;]” however, the Court’s reasoning in arriving at that conclusion is illustrative in demonstrating why the Act in the matter at hand is one of those cases. See id.
DLS involved a challenge brought by a corporate owner and employees of a night club devoted to erotic dancing to a Chattanooga City Ordinance that regulated adult-oriented establishments, on the grounds that the ordinance was unconstitutional. See DLS, Inc., 107 F.3d at 405. The City of Chattanooga originally enacted the ordinance in 1986 “to regulate ‘adult-oriented establishments,’ which were defined to include, inter alia, both ‘adult cabarets,’ or public facilities that feature employees who expose their breasts, buttocks, or genitals *579to public view, and ‘adult bookstores,’ or bookstores that also offer films or live entertainment that depict certain defined ‘sexual activities’ or ‘anatomical areas.’” Id. After a series of amendments and constitutional challenges, the amended ordinance was challenged with respect to the provision that “prohibit[ed] entertainers from approaching within six feet of customers, employees, or other entertainers during a performance.... ” Id. In the course of making their argument that the provision violated the First Amendment, the plaintiffs claimed that the provision was not content neutral because it did not regulate similar activities.1 Id. In other words, the plaintiffs argued that the provision was unconstitutional because it was underinclusive. Id.
This Court then recognized that “in some rare cases, the underinelusiveness of a law-i.e., the failure of the government to regulate other, similar activity-may give rise to a conclusion that the government has in fact made an impermissible distinction on the basis of the content of the regulated speech.” DLS, Inc., 107 F.3d at 411. In finding that the matter before it was “not one of those cases[,]” the Court noted that “[t]he expressive content of the items in plaintiffs’ laundry list of unregulated transactions is virtually identical to that of erotic dancing; however, none of the items carries with it the same danger of crime and disease that the adult cabarets do.” Id. (emphasis added).
Here, on the other hand, Defendants have offered nothing to indicate that the purported secondary effects that the Act was designed to prevent-increased crime and prostitution, reduced property values, urban blight, the spread of sexually transmitted and communicable diseases, and an overall downturn in the quality of life-are any less of a concern with live adult cabarets than with the adult bookstores, thereby making this case distinguishable from DLS. Indeed, when asked at oral argument as to why these secondary concerns are not present with live cabarets, Defendant offered no response. Common sense would seem to dictate that,-if anything, the secondary effects would be more of a concern with live cabarets inasmuch as unlike the instance with adult bookstores where patrons purchase sexually explicit material for use or viewing at some location away from the store itself, patrons of live cabarets are viewing and experiencing the sexually explicit material at that location, thereby making it more likely that the patron would have sexual contact with an entertainer, or to engage in lewd acts in the surrounding area. In fact, the Supreme Court has found constitutional an Indiana state ordinance requiring otherwise nude dancers to wear pasties and G-strings, recognizing that the ordinance was enacted to protect the public from harmful secondary effects of such live nude establishments. See Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S. 560, 569-70, 111 S.Ct. 2456, 115 L.Ed.2d 504 (1991).
Because the nonregulated live cabarets of the kind involved here raise the same specter of secondary effects associated with the regulated adult bookstores, it should be concluded that the Tennessee legislature “in fact made an impermissible distinction on the basis of the content of the regulated speech.” DLS, Inc., 107 F.3d at 411 (finding that because “none of the items in [the laundry list of unregulated activities] carries with it the same dan*580ger of crime and disease that the [regulated activities] do[,]” the ordinance was not impermissibly content based). In other words, this Court has guided us with the directive that where the expressive content of a regulated and a nonregulated activity are the same, we -must look to secondary effects of the two activities or establishments to determine the content neutrality of the ordinance. Id. Where no differences can be drawn, a conclusion of constitutional infirmity may be reached. Id.
The majority attempts to diminish the force of this Court’s directive in DLS-that a regulation may be considered underin-clusive and therefore run afoul of the Constitution when the secondary effects of a regulated activity and those of an unregulated similar activity are indistinguishable-by couching the DLS directive as “a single clause.” The force of a directive cannot be minimized by the brevity of its grammatical characterization. Indeed, the First Amendment itself is a “single ” sentence upon which the jurisprudence of our country is deeply committed to every “clause ” therein. See Bonnell v. Lorenzo, 241 F.3d 800, 827 (6th Cir.2001) (“[W]e hope that whenever we decide to tolerate intolerant speech, the speaker as well as the audience will understand that we do so to express our deep commitment to the value of tolerance — a value protected by every clause in the single sentence called the First Amendment ....”) (quoting Edward J. Cleary, Beyond the Burning Cross 198 (1995) (quoting speech of Justice Stevens)). In addition, the force of the “single clause” directive in DLS cannot be swept aside as the majority attempts to do by rendering the directive some sort of “bolstering” device, or by simply looking to the expressive content of the two activities involved. To do so negates the very characteristic which this Court found outcome determinative in DLS; namely, that the secondary effects between the regulated and the nonregulat-ed establishments were different.
Similarly, the force of the DLS directive cannot be minimized by the majority’s claim that it is a mere “inference” that I have drawn from the case. The majority contends that such an “inference” is “inconsistent with the uncontested fact that the expressive content of the live cabarets and adult bookstores is virtually identical.” As noted, the DLS directive that an ordinance may be considered content based when the expressive content as well as the secondary effects of the two establishments are the same, is a premise-not an inference, that this Court found so significant that the case turned on the fact that the secondary effects between the two establishments there were different.
Along this line, the significant fact that the secondary effects of the regulated bookstores and unregulated live cabarets are the same cannot be summarily dismissed by the majority’s speculation that the Tennessee legislature “apparently” differentiated between the two types of establishments not on the content of their expression, but on the medium of their expression, “simply because the legislature had dealt with the secondary effects of live cabarets the year before and turned to bookstores the following year.” In support of this conclusion, the majority relies upon a case from the Ninth Circuit, Ripplinger v. Collins, 868 F.2d 1043 (9th Cir.1989). It is true, as the majority contends, that the Ninth Circuit found that Arizona’s obscenity statute, which provided an exemption for cable television operators but not booksellers, did not violate the Equal Protection Clause under a rational basis standard of review. However, the Ninth Circuit did so, in part, on the “[v]alid distinctions between cable and other broadcasting.” See id. at 1051. Specifically, the court noted that the Arizona legislature “may have determined that ... cable television is less pervasive and extreme in its sexual content.” Id. Here, unlike in Ripplinger, there are no distinctions between the ex*581pressive content nor the secondary effects of the regulated bookstores and the no-nregulated live cabarets.
The underinclusiveness of a regulation may fall afoul of the Equal Protection Clause rendering the regulation unconstitutional. See DLS, Inc., 107 F.3d at 411. Because the dangers posed by live cabarets not only carry the specter of dangers the Act seeks to prevent, but in fact may carry with them a greater likelihood of these dangers, I would hold the Act unconstitutional as underinclusive. The majority’s contention that this conclusion cannot be reached where the content of the speech is virtually identical, fails to consider the significance of when the secondary effects of each are also virtually identical as espoused by this Court in DLS.
For the above-stated reasons, I would hold the Act unconstitutional, and therefore respectfully dissent.2

. I would find the entire Act unconstitutional inasmuch as the Act lacks a severability clause. See State ex rel. Barker v. Harmon, 882 S.W.2d 352, 355 (Tenn.1994) (noting that the doctrine of elision is not favored in Tennessee, and that without the inclusion of a severability clause in the statute, severability of the invalid portion of a statute in order to allow the remainder to survive is not proper).