Court Opinion

ID: 9666721
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:26:19.344862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:32.358540
License: Public Domain

KEITH, Chief Justice
(concurring specially).
I join in the court’s opinion but add these further observations.
Under the Barnes case, “state and local governments that have been seeking to drive totally nude dancing establishments out of them communities may do so without invoking their authority under the Twenty-first Amendment to prohibit nude dancing in establishments serving liquor.” Comment, 105 Harv.L.Rev. 287, 292 (1991). Moreover, under Barnes, states and municipalities may require dancers in public establishments, including barrooms, to wear at least “ ‘pasties and a G-string’” and may well have the authority to impose more restrictive limitations. Id. (quoting Barnes, 501 S.Ct. at 592, 111 S.Ct. at 2474 (White, J., dissenting)).
Koppinger v. City of Fairmont, 311 Minn. 186, 248 N.W.2d 708 (1976), a decision preceding the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Barnes, merely invalidated an ordinance involving nudity restrictions in public places under the overbreadth doctrine of the First Amendment. We did not hold or imply in Koppinger that nude dancing in public places is protected under the Minnesota Constitution and that absent a Minnesota Constitutional Amendment such as the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, municipalities may not use liquor licensing authority to prohibit nude barroom dancing.
More relevant is our decision in State v. Ray, 292 Minn. 104, 193 N.W.2d 315 (1971), where this court had little difficulty rejecting a claim that the First Amendment of the United States Constitution was violated by the application of ordinances prohibiting indecent conduct to a purported photographic studio where one could, for á fee, rent a cheap Polaroid-brand camera and take pictures of nude women. I have little doubt that if the same judges who decided Ray had been asked to decide that case under the Minnesota Constitution, they would have reached the same result. I also have little doubt that they would have rejected plaintiff bar-owner’s claim in this case that the Minnesota Constitution protects nude barroom dancing absent the adoption of an amendment comparable to the Twenty-first Amendment.