Court Opinion

ID: 6979653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-24 02:17:17.661644+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:09:08.088632
License: Public Domain

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. I believe that the district court erred in granting summary *558judgment. By requiring nude dancers to perform on a raised platform and to remain at least ten feet away from customers, the City of Kent effectively outlawed table-dancing. The issue before us is whether table dancing constitutes a separate form of expressive communication from other types of nude dancing-that is, whether table dancers communicate a message different in content than that communicated by nude stage dancers, and other nude dancers who perform at a distance of more than ten feet from their customers. The appellants presented sufficient evidence to establish a triable issue of fact on that question. By doing so, they have precluded a judicial determination that the ordinance is content-neutral as a matter of law. Because the district court reached that very conclusion, I would reverse and remand for trial.
As an initial matter, I disagree with Section III of the majority opinion, which resolves no legal issues, but seeks to leave the impression that nude dancing may merely be “low-value” speech entitled to “only marginal First Amendment protection.” The panel admits that erotic dancing is constitutionally protected but claims that the extent of that protection is unclear, thus implying that it is unnecessary to look too closely at the restrictions on speech at issue in this case. I disagree. In this Circuit, it is clear that nude erotic dancers are entitled to full First Amendment protection for the expressive messages conveyed in their dancing. Kev, Inc. v. Kitsap County, 793 F.2d 1053, 1058 (9th Cir.1986).
I also disagree with the majority that the ten foot set-back at issue in this ease is content-neutral as a matter of law. ' A regulation on constitutionally protected speech is content-neutral only if it is justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech. City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41, 47-48, 106 S.Ct. 925, 89 L.Ed.2d 29 (1986). Kent’s ordinance requires that all entertainers perform on a stage at least two feet above the patron seating area, and that no performer may dance any closer than ten (10) feet from any patron. The majority concludes that this law is content-neutral because it is not content-based “on its face.”
This determination obviously begs the question at issue here: what is the content of the message communicated by the table dancer, as opposed to the stage dancer? If it is the same message — only magnified by proximity — then the majority is correct. If, however, stage dancers and table dancers communicate different expressive content in their respective messages, then summary judgment was improper. Appellants argue that the ordinance on its face bans certain forms of communication because it bars close physical proximity between dancers and patrons. They assert that proximity itself — the distance, or lack thereof, between the dancer and the patron — is integral to the message conveyed by table dancing. This message is entirely different, they contend, than the message conveyed by stage dancers.
In support of this contention, appellants proffered the testimony of cultural anthropologist Judith Hanna, a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Maryland. Hanna is the author of four books and approximately 80 scholarly articles on the anthropology of dance as non-verbal communication. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in exotic dance establishments as well as interviews with dancers and patrons. Hanna asserts that table dancers seek to send a message that is entirely different from that sent by stage dancers:
The message of the table dancer is personal interest in and understanding of the customer.... The entertainer creates an illusion of concern and availability for the customer and seeks to effect a transformation in the patron’s feelings. Some customers get the personal attention of an attractive female who would not otherwise related to them or “give them the time of day;” some customers are reminded of what is to be desired.
Hanna concluded that close proximity between the dancer and the patron is an integral and essential part of the message itself. This is so, according to Hanna, not only because of the message of personal interest sent by the dancer’s physical presence but also by other nonverbal communication that is only possible in close quarters. Specifically, Hanna testified that “proximity permits *559eye contact and awareness of indicators of attraction and satisfaction such as the mouth position, eye brightness, pupil dilation and expansion, facial color, breath, perfume, and body odors.”
Appellants also introduced the declaration of Dr. Edward Donnerstein, the chair of the University of California-Santa Barbara Department of Communications who has studied the impact of distance on audience perceptions of erotic dance performances. Dr. Donnerstein, who was the lead social scientist called to give expert testimony before former United States Attorney General Edwin Meese’s Commission on Pornography, concluded that proximity is not merely an incidental component of erotic dance but is integral to the message itself. He concluded that
The relational and erotic communication sought to be communicated by erotic dance performance is significantly and substantially effected (sic), reduced, and degraded by the requirement that performers be separated from their intended audience by a minimum distance of ten (10) feet.
Both Hanna and Donnerstein contrasted the message sent by physical closeness with that sent by the distance imposed by stage dancing, which, Hanna testified, transmits an entirely different signal: “coldness and impersonality.” Appellants contend, with the support of their experts’ declarations, that stage dancing communicates “the remoteness of the ‘unreachable’ object of desire” through its use of distance. Appellants, by producing these declarations, have created a material question of fact regarding whether table dancing is, as the district court and the majority conclude, merely stage dancing at a “louder volume,” or whether it is an altogether different form of expression that depends upon proximity, and communicates a different and particular content.
To the extent that a reasonable trier of fact might conclude that table dancing and stage dancing are qualitatively distinct forms of expression, the ordinance is itself facially content-based. Moreover, evidence was adduced by appellants that Kent banned proximity precisely because it wants to constrain dancers from doing the very things that according to appellants’ experts are essential to the message-ehiefly getting close enough to the patrons so that they can communicate the message in the form that only table dancing permits.
Given the circumstances set forth above, the factual issue created by appellants’ expert testimony is one for a jury. It was not appropriate for the district court or this court to substitute its own views regarding the purpose and effect of table dancing and decide as a factual matter the content of the message conveyed by that form of expressive communication. Accordingly, I would reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment.