Court Opinion

ID: 9494460
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:38:18.987032+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:25.451750
License: Public Domain

BYE, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the majority’s conclusion about the constitutionality of Mankato City Ordinance § 4.09.1 therefore concur in the result, which denies the injunctive relief sought by BZAPS. But I disagree with the majority’s analysis of Mankato City Ordinance § 10.83. BZAPS initiated its challenge to § 10.83 eleven months before Mankato passed § 4.09. Because I believe we may liberally construe BZAPS’s prayer for relief as asking for damages for the constitutional violation that occurred during that time period, I dissent from parts I and II of the majority opinion.
Unlike § 4.09, which addresses Manka-to’s concern about the harmful secondary effects of combining alcohol and adult entertainment, § 10.83 was enacted to address the city’s concern about the harmful secondary effects of adult businesses, period. In City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., the Supreme Court upheld a similar municipal ordinance because it was “ ‘narrowly tailored’ to affect only that category of theatres shown to produce the unwanted secondary effects.” 475 U.S. 41, 52, 106 S.Ct. 925, 89 L.Ed.2d 29 (1986). Mankato City Ordinance § 10.83 might likewise be “narrowly tailored” if it applied only to a category of businesses which, on an ongoing basis, have “more than 10% of [their] stock in trade or floor area allocated to, or more than twenty percent (20%) of its gross receipts derived from, any adult use.” Mankato City Ordinance § 10.83(1)(C).
Mankato contends, however, that its ordinance applies on a per-day basis. By applying the ordinance in that manner, Mankato targets the content of a single *609adult performance — rather than a category of adult businesses shown to produce harmful secondary effects — without presenting evidence that a single adult performance has any harmful secondary effects on the community.
In Tollis Inc. v. San Bernardino County, the Ninth Circuit struck down an ordinance that San Bernardino County construed in such a way that a single showing of adult entertainment rendered a business “adult oriented” as defined by the ordinance. 827 F.2d 1329, 1333 (9th Cir.1987). The court held that the County failed to show the ordinance was “sufficiently ‘narrowly tailored’ to affect only that category of businesses shown to produce the harmful secondary effects” because the County had “presented no evidence that a single showing of an adult movie would have any harmful secondary effects on the community.” Id.
I fully agree with Tollis, and believe it to be entirely consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision in Renton. Mankato presented no evidence that a single showing of an adult performance puts a business in that category of businesses shown to produce harmful secondary effects. As a result, the city failed to show that the ordinance, as applied on a per-day basis, was narrowly tailored under Renton.
I read the majority as rejecting Tollis because, if we require evidence that a single performance causes adverse secondary effects, then we will impose the impossible burden on cities of showing the precise number of performances that will produce harmful secondary effects before it can regulate any adult performances. If the majority is rejecting Tollis on the ground that its analysis would inevitably require courts to determine how many adult performances are too many, I respectfully disagree.
Under Renton, Mankato absolutely has the burden of narrowly tailoring its ordinance. An ordinance that allows the city to regulate the content of a single performance, without presenting evidence that a single performance causes adverse secondary effects, is not narrowly tailored. A per-day application of § 10.83 necessarily raises the specter of impermissible content-based regulation of the expressive content of the single performance itself, rather than the permissible regulation of a category of business shown to produce harmful secondary effects.
Clearly, ordinances can be drafted in such a way that courts will not be required to determine when the number of adult performances — presented by an otherwise “non-adult oriented” business — crosses the constitutional line. For example, § 10.83 could be saved simply by applying its “10% floor space/20% gross receipts” standard on something other than a per-day basis, perhaps quarterly or annually. Requiring Mankato to narrowly tailor this ordinance clearly does not impose an impossible burden, when the ordinance itself suggests an entirely reasonable, and possible, constitutional interpretation.