Court Opinion

ID: 9648017
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:59:02.505863+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:04.858771
License: Public Domain

CASTILLE, Justice,
concurring.
I agree with the majority that Sections 1(c) and 2 of the ordinance at issue must be stricken. However, because a majority of the United States Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of a virtually identical ordinance under the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution, and because this Court is bound by the United States Supreme Court’s interpretations of the Federal Constitution, I must disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the provisions of the ordinance at issue fail under the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Instead, I believe that the provisions of the ordinance at issue here must be stricken under Article I, § 7 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Accordingly, I concur only in the result reached by the majority in this matter.
The United States Supreme Court case which lies at the crux of this matter is Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S. 560, 111 S.Ct. 2456, 115 L.Ed.2d 504 (1991). In Barnes, the United States Supreme Court reviewed a statute which was, as the majority herein states, “strikingly similar” to the ordinance sub judice.1 The critical issue in Barnes was the *365characterization of the purpose of the statute, for if the purpose of a statute is the suppression of protected expression, then under prevailing First Amendment precedent, the strict scrutiny test applies.
According to the majority in the instant matter, there was “no point on which a majority of the Barnes Court agreed,” aside from agreeing that nude dancing is expressive conduct for First Amendment purposes. Maj. Op. at 278. Thus, the majority gleans that Barnes is not binding precedent on the issue of whether the ordinance sub judice can be characterized as relating to the suppression of free expression under the First Amendment. Finding no such binding precedent in Barnes, the majority proceeds to determine that the ordinance at issue here is related to the suppression of free expression, and further finds that the ordinance fails to pass constitutional muster under the strict scrutiny test. I believe that the majority herein strains to find discord in Barnes where none exists. In so doing, the majority circumvents binding United States Supreme Court precedent.
My disagreement with the majority centers on the fact that five Justices, and thus a majority, voted to uphold the ordinance in Barnes on the basis that the ordinance at issue in Barnes could not be characterized as relating to the suppression of free expression for purposes of the First Amendment. Therefore, a five-justice majority declined to apply the strict scrutiny test.
The plurality opinion, authored by Chief Justice Rehnquist and joined by Justices Kennedy and O’Connor, stated: “... the public indecency statute furthers a substantial government *366interest in protecting order and morality. This interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression.” Barnes, supra, 501 U.S. at 569 (emphasis added).
In a separate concurrence, Justice Souter agreed with the majority that the statute was not aimed at the suppression of free expression, and therefore also declined to apply strict scrutiny. Id. at 586, 111 S.Ct. 2456 (Souter, J., concurring) (“the [state’s] interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression”) (emphasis added). Justice Souter simply disagreed with the majority as to what purpose the statute was in fact serving, believing that purpose to be the prevention of prostitution, sexual assaults and other criminal activity, rather than the general interest in morality asserted by the majority. Id.
Finally, in another separate concurrence, Justice Scalia agreed with the plurality and Justice Souter that the purpose of the statute was not the suppression of protected free expression. Justice Scalia wrote separately because he did not believe that the “public nudity” proscribed by the statute was entitled to any First Amendment protection at all since it was not “expressive” behavior which would fall within the protective ambit of the First Amendment. However, Justice Scalia agreed with the plurality regarding the underlying purpose of the statute:
The purpose of the Indiana statute, as both its text and the manner of enforcement demonstrate, is to enforce the traditional moral belief that people should not expose their private parts indiscriminately, regardless of whether those who see them are disedified. Since that is so, the dissent has no basis for positing that, where only thoroughly edified adults are present, the purpose must be repression of communication.
Id. at 575, 111 S.Ct. 2456 (Scalia, J., eoncurring)(emphasis added). Thus, while Justice Scalia did not entirely endorse the plurality’s reasoning, he also did “not think the plurality’s *367conclusions differ greatly from my own.” Id. at 579, 111 S.Ct. 2456.2
Thus, the basic premise upon which five Justices of the United States Supreme Court agreed is that the purpose of a statute virtually identical to the one at issue here cannot be characterized as the suppression of protected expression.3 Accordingly, none of these five Justices believed that the strict scrutiny test was appropriate. The majority herein overlooks this fact, deems the Barnes Court “hopelessly fragmented” and discerns no binding common ground in Barnes. Consequently, the majority adopts the position of the Barnes dissenters, finds the ordinance at issue a content-based ordinance which is aimed at the suppression of protected expression and applies the strict scrutiny test. By applying the First Amendment strict scrutiny test in spite of Barnes, the majority here defies binding precedent.
Although I believe that Sections 1(c) and 2 of the Ordinance at issue here do not fail under the First Amendment in light of Barnes, I nevertheless concur in the result reached by the majority since I believe that those provisions must be stricken under Article I, § 7 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which provides: “... The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man, and every citizen may freely speak, write and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty ... ”. Pa. Const. Art. 1. § 7. This Court has repeatedly determined that Article I, § 7 affords greater protection to speech and conduct in this Commonwealth than does its federal counterpart, the First *368Amendment. See William Goldman Theatres, Inc. v. Dana, 405 Pa. 83, 87, 173 A.2d 59, 61, cert. denied, 368 U.S. 897, 82 S.Ct. 174, 7 L.Ed.2d 93 (1961); Willing v. Mazzocone, 482 Pa. 377, 383, 393 A.2d 1155, 1158 (1978); Commonwealth v. Tate, 495 Pa. 158, 174, 432 A.2d 1382, 1390 (1981); Western Pennsylvania Socialist Workers v. Connecticut Gen. Life Ins., 512 Pa. 23, 37, 515 A.2d 1331, 1338 (1986); Insurance Adjustment Bureau v. Insurance Commissioner, 518 Pa. 210, 542 A.2d 1317 (1988).
I believe that the dissent authored by Justice White in Barnes is persuasive and that this Court should adopt it for purposes of interpreting Article I, § 7 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. As Justice White pointed out in Barnes, the position of the Barnes plurality—that the purpose served by the ordinance at issue was to protect morals and public order rather than to suppress free expression—is patently erroneous. Justice White wrote:
The purpose of forbidding people to appear nude in parks, beaches, hot dog stands and like public places is to protect others from offense. But that could not possibly be the purpose of preventing nude dancing in theatres and barrooms since the viewers are exclusively consenting adults who pay money to see these dances. The purpose of the proscription in these contexts is to protect the viewers from what the State believes is the harmful message that nude dancing communicates.
This being the case, it cannot be that the statutory prohibition is unrelated to expressive conduct. Since the state permits the dancers to perform if they wear pasties and G-strings but forbids nude dancing, it is precisely because of the distinctive, expressive content of the nude dancing performances in this case that the State seeks to apply the statutory prohibition. It is only because nude dancing performances may generate emotions and feelings of eroticism and sensuality among the spectators that the State seeks to regulate such expressive activity, apparently on the assumption that creating or emphasizing such thoughts or *369ideas in the minds of the spectators may lead to increased prostitution and the degradation of women. But generating thoughts, ideas, and emotions is the essence of communication. The nudity element of nude dancing performances cannot be pigeonholed as mere “conduct” independent of any expressive component of the dance.
Barnes, supra, 501 U.S. at 590-592, 111 S.Ct. 2456 (White, J., dissenting).
Justice White’s dissent forcefully articulates the position which I believe that this Court should adopt for purposes of our interpretation of Article I, § 7 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. If the purpose of the ordinance, as the plurality and Justice Scalia believed, was merely to “enforce the traditional moral belief that people should not expose their private parts indiscriminately,”4 then the ordinance presumably would not allow people to display indiscriminately their private parts to innumerable relatives, friends, and others whom they care to invite into their homes. Since the ordinance does not prohibit such behavior, the moral justification must be deemed illusory. The true purpose of the ordinance, as applied to appellant and others similarly situated, is to prevent the customers in appellant’s and like establishments from being exposed to the distinctive communicative aspects of nude dancing. One might call this a moral justification, insofar as the drafters of the ordinance seem to be expressing their moral condemnation of those citizens of the Commonwealth who are attracted to this distinct form of communication, but lawmakers cannot invoke the sword of morality specifically to attack a form of protected expression. The fact that this particular form of protected expression may not ascend to the level of a high art form is irrelevant.5 Lawmakers may not categorically pro*370scribe any form of protected expression simply because they are not at ease with its content.
Accordingly, for purposes of Article I, § 7 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, I believe that the strict scrutiny test is appropriately applied in this case. I concur in the majority’s application of the strict scrutiny test, as well as the remainder of the majority’s disposition of this case.
ZAPPALA, J., joins this concurring opinion.

. The ordinance in Barnes provided:
Sec. 1. (a) A person who knowingly or intentionally, in a public place:
(1) engages in sexual intercourse;
*365(2) engages in deviate sexual conduct;
(3) appears in a state of nudity; or
(4) fondles the genitals of another person; commits public indecency, a Class A misdemeanor.
(b) ‘Nudity’ means the showing of the human male or female genitals, pubic area or buttocks with less than a fully opaque covering, the showing of the female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any part of the nipple, or the showing of the covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state.
The ordinance at issue in the matter sub judice is excerpted in footnote two of the Majority Opinion.

. Notwithstanding Justice Scalia’s belief that his own concurrence did not depart significantly from the plurality’s position, the majority of this Court confidently asserts that Justice Scalia arrived at his conclusion by a "radically different route” than that taken by the Barnes plurality. Regardless of whether Justice Scalia’s concurrence is to be interpreted in accordance with Justice Scalia’s clearly stated intent or interpreted as the majority herein characterizes it, the important point is that Justice Scalia, like the plurality and Justice Souter, clearly did not believe that the statute was aimed at the suppression of protected expression.

. The majority acknowledges that binding precedent can emanate from a fragmented Court when that Court can be said to be in agreement on a given concept. See Maj. Slip Op. at 278.

. Barnes, supra, 501 U.S. at 575, 111 S.Ct. 2456 (Scalia, J., concurring).

. This concept was eloquently articulated by Justice Harlan: “It is largely because government officials cannot make principled decisions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual.” Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 25, 91 S.Ct. 1780, 29 L.Ed.2d 284 (1971). Or, put another way: "While the entertainment afforded by a nude ballet at Lincoln Center to those who can pay the price may differ vastly in content (as viewed by judges) or *370in quality (as viewed by critics), it may not differ in substance from the dance viewed by the person who ... wants some ‘entertainment’ with his beer or shot of rye.” Salem Inn, Inc. v. Frank, 501 F.2d 18, 21 n. 3 (2d Cir.1974), aff'd in part sub nom. Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc., 422 U.S. 922, 95 S.Ct. 2561, 45 L.Ed.2d 648 (1975).