Court Opinion

ID: 9774803
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:34:14.427262+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:16.224216
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
The Majority Opinion is mixing apples and oranges. It would be perfectly proper, constitutionally, for Newport to write an ordinance prohibiting public nudity in a place like the Mousetrap. The problem is it chose to write this particular ordinance, which defines “public place” by reference to KRS 525.-010(3), and as such prohibits nudity in other circumstances where to do so impairs constitutionally protected freedom of expression. The case in point is Doran v. Salem Inn, 422 U.S. 922, 95 S.Ct. 2561, 45 L.Ed.2d 648 (1975), not Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 2456, 115 L.Ed.2d 504 (1991).
In Doran, the Supreme Court held that the District Court had not erred in granting a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of an ordinance similar to the Newport ordinance. The Supreme Court agreed with the District Court that the statute was over-broad because “there is no limit to the inter*339pretation of the term ‘any public place.’ ” Doran, supra, 422 U.S. at 933, 95 S.Ct. at 2568, 45 L.Ed.2d at 660.
On the other hand, in Barnes, a plurality of the Supreme Court used a four-part test to determine the statute in question was constitutional only because the Indiana Supreme Court “has construed the Indiana statute to preclude nudity in what are essentially public accommodations such as Glen Theatre and the Kitty Kat Lounge.” Barnes, supra, 501 U.S. at —, 111 S.Ct. at 2460, 115 L.Ed.2d at 511.
Sure, the City of Newport could draft an ordinance prohibiting nude dancing for commercial purposes at strip joints, and the Mousetrap would quality despite its feeble attempts at subterfuge. But instead of drafting an ordinance narrowly tailored to achieve a constitutionally permissible purpose, the ordinance borrows the definition of “public place” from the riot and disorderly conduct statute, which defines “public place” in broad terms:
“ ‘Public place’ means a place to which the public or a substantial group of persons has access and includes but is not limited to highways, transportation facilities, schools, places of amusements, parks, places of business, playgrounds and hallways, lobbies and other portions of apartment houses and hotels not constituting rooms or apartments designed for actual residence. An act is deemed to occur in a public place if it produces its offensive or proscribed consequences in a public place.” KRS 525.010(3).
While a broad definition is suitable for prohibiting disorderly conduct, it is not suitable for prohibiting nude dancing which, unlike disorderly conduct, may implicate freedom of expression.
Our previous decision in Musselman v. Commonwealth, Ky., 705 S.W.2d 476 (1986), should control our decision here. In it we held that the harassment statute, KRS 525.-070(l)(b), was impermissibly broad because the definition was not “restricted to ‘fighting words’ or words ‘which have a direct tendency to cause acts of violence by the person to whom ... addressed.’ ” Id. at 477. While a constitutional statute, with a perfectly appropriate narrow definition of harassment confined to “fighting words” could have been written, and such a statute would have been more than adequate to cover the outrageous coarse and abusive language Musselman used toward a police officer, in Kentucky the judiciary does not presume to rewrite statutes facially unconstitutional, to make them constitutional. This is a legislative, not a judicial, function. In Commonwealth v. Foley, Ky., 798 S.W.2d 947, 948 (1990), we wrote:
“[I]t is of no moment that the conduct alleged in the indictment could be constitutionally prohibited and criminalized. The statute must be tested on the basis of what is said rather than what might have been said.”
The Newport ordinance fails this test. What is critical in Foley in deciding whether a statute intended to stop election bribery and vote buying is constitutionally overbroad, is equally appropriate for a Newport ordinance to stop nude dancing.
The U.S. Supreme Court makes no distinction between state statute as written and state statute as judicially construed in deciding whether the state law violates freedom of expression, but we do. The U.S. Supreme Court accepts “casus omissus,” i.e., a cure of the pmission (of the statutory deficiency) by state court decision, but we do not. The reasons that underlie the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in both Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., supra, wherein the Indiana Supreme Court cured the Indiana statute, and Gooding v. Wilson, 405 U.S. 518, 92 S.Ct. 1103, 31 L.Ed.2d 408 (1972), wherein the Georgia Supreme Court cured the Georgia statute on harassment by providing a judicial definition limited to “fighting words,” do not apply here. Until this case our Court has refused to provide a “casus omissus.” The Majority Opinion is squarely in conflict with the Musselman case where we so refused, and with the Foley case where we so refused, and with a number of other Kentucky cases to the same effect cited therein. Our Court has no power to restrictively apply a statute or ordinance that is unconstitutionally over-broad to make it constitutional.
*340Our opinions should clarify the law, not confuse it; refine it, not adulterate it. While the result achieved in this case may appear just (to most everyone but the Mousetrap) the methodology is flawed. We cannot afford the price we pay here in damage to basic principles while seeking to reach a just result.
STEPHENS, C.J., and COMBS, J., join.