Court Opinion

ID: 9618489
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:13:09.458491+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:38:02.993815
License: Public Domain

Sears, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent to the majority’s affirmance of the trial court’s ruling that Carrollton’s adult entertainment ordinance passes constitutional muster. I conclude that it does not because Carrollton failed to show that the ordinance “furthers an important governmental interest which is unrelated to free speech.” Quetgles v. City of Columbus, 264 Ga. 708, 712 (450 SE2d 677) (1994). To establish this governmental interest, Carrollton, as was its right, chose to rely on the experience of other counties and municipalities regarding the pernicious secondary effects of adult entertainment establishments. Discotheque, Inc. v. City Council of Augusta, 264 Ga. 623, 624 (449 SE2d 608) (1994). However, once the statute was challenged, Carrollton was required to offer “probative evidence of the ‘experience’ of other municipalities *533and counties upon which [it] relied.” Discotheque, 264 Ga. at 624. Without such probative evidence, a trial court cannot fulfill its responsibility of ensuring that the adult entertainment ordinance does further one or more important governmental interests that are unrelated to the suppression of speech.
In this case, in response to interrogatories that requested information of the studies and reports made known to the Mayor and City Council regarding the secondary effects of adult entertainment establishments, Carrollton merely listed certain reports from other cities. These answers thus suffer from the same fundamental defect as did the preamble to the Augusta ordinance in Discotheque, 264 Ga. 623 (see Quetgles, 264 Ga. at 709, n. 1, which sets forth the entire preamble to Augusta’s ordinance (Fletcher, J., concurring)).
In Discotheque, the preamble stated that Augusta was passing its ordinance based on the experience of other cities and counties and then listed those cities and counties. We held that this statement in the preamble amounted to “self-serving conclusory hearsay” regarding the experience of other municipalities and was not probative evidence of that experience. Likewise, here, the answers to the interrogatories, which merely list allegedly applicable studies, are merely “self-serving conclusory hearsay,” Discotheque, 264 Ga. at 624, and are not probative evidence of the experience of other municipalities. Contrary to the assertion in the majority opinion, the list of the studies and the city’s representations regarding them were offered to prove the truth of the matters asserted therein — that the studies demonstrated the undesirable secondary effects of adult entertainment establishments and justified the regulations contained in the city’s ordinance. Lacking probative evidence to that effect, the trial court in this case could not reasonably determine whether the legislative restrictions further an important governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of speech. Stated differently, if the studies and the city’s representations regarding them are not offered for the truth of the matter asserted therein, then there is no method by which the trial court or this Court can determine whether the alleged studies were a mere subterfuge to justify an ordinance enacted to suppress speech. Under the majority’s rationale, so long as the city council stated that its interpretation of a study demonstrated the evils of adult entertainment, it would be irrelevant whether the study in question really did so.3 The majority has, in fact, failed to follow our previous opinion in Discotheque, 264 *534Ga. at 624. There, we required the city to produce some probative “evidence that criminal activity and deterioration of neighborhoods were . . . pernicious secondary effects of adult entertainment establishments.” The type of statement permitted under the majority opinion today — the mere statement by a city council member that a study showed those effects — is not evidence that establishes those secondary effects, as the statement is hearsay in this regard.
Decided June 5, 1995
Reconsideration denied June 30, 1995.
Thomas E. Maddox, Jr., for appellant.
Wiggins & Camp, William J. Wiggins, for appellee.
Moreover, Carrollton failed to demonstrate, in its answers to the interrogatories or otherwise, that it relied upon these studies and reports “in passing the municipal ordinance.” Discotheque, 264 Ga. at 624. See also Quetgles, 264 Ga. at 712 (Sears, J., dissenting).
Finally, although Club Southern Burlesque did agree for the city’s answers to the interrogatories to be treated as evidence, it did not waive its right to have those answers evaluated under the appropriate legal standards. For the foregoing reasons, applying those standards leads ineluctably to the conclusion that Carrollton failed to carry its burden to show that it had an important governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of speech in enacting the ordinance. I therefore dissent to the majority opinion.
I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Hunt joins in this dissent.

 The majority’s rationale, taken to its logical conclusion, would permit a city council to regulate activities at mainstream art museums simply by stating that it had relied on a study concluding that nude photographs, paintings, and statues created undesirable secondary effects. Whether that were actually true would be irrelevant under the standard adopted by the majority.