Court Opinion

ID: 9631800
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:50:33.4687+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:01.617614
License: Public Domain

Hale, C.J.
(dissenting)—Rarely has it been recorded that anyone mistook a bookstore for a movie house. That is, not until now. Apparently in contemplating the current cultural scene where some bookstores are known to sell and show both movies and books, the court reached what to me is a curious conclusion that, if bookstores cannot constitutionally be licensed, neither can motion picture theaters. I *761see little relationship, however, between an ordinance licensing bookstores and one licensing a motion picture theater. Thus, I find inapplicable the court’s conclusion from Perrine v. Municipal Court, 5 Cal. 3d 656, 488 P.2d 648, 97 Cal. Rptr. 320 (1971), that, because it is unconstitutional to license bookstores in California, it is likewise unconstitutional to license motion picture theaters in Washington.
Unlike bookstores, theaters of one kind or another, whether of the legitimate stage, vaudeville, variety, or circus, have been subject to regulation and licensing virtually since colonial times in this country. The distinctions between bookstores per se and motion picture theaters per se, and the business of operating either, are in law so clear and definitive that no court should have much difficulty in recognizing them. And the distinction between an ordinance, such as the one which the court now voids, and one purporting to demand a license of an innocent bookseller should be equally clear when it comes to legislation enacted under the police power to protect the public from danger and obviate the hazards of fire, flood, contamination, structural collapse, air pollution, traffic congestion, crime and exposure to obscenity and pornography. Accordingly, I find unacceptable the court’s syllogism derived from Perrine that, because a city ordinance purporting to license bookstores is unconstitutional as abridging freedom of speech, so, too, is one licensing motion picture shows, massage parlors, cabarets, pool halls and other similar enterprises where speech is singularly free and untrammelled.
Theaters are but one of many kinds of businesses subjected to this particular licensing measure; the ordinance includes massage parlors, bowling alleys, drive-in theaters, poolrooms, cabarets, public bathhouses, public dance halls and the like. 2 Seattle Code § 10.02.100. It is a licensing measure having roots in the long-held legislative view that movie houses, theaters, pool halls, cabarets, bowling alleys, massage parlors and similar callings of public invitation are particularly susceptible to public hazard.
*762If a city has a reasonable basis to assume that these enterprises may, because of their peculiar nature, adversely affect the public peace, health, safety, welfare and morals, I think the constitutions allow it .to impose reasonable conditions for the issuance of a theater or similar license'—and make its issuance or continuance dependent on good conduct and good moral character.
A motion picture house does present unusual hazards which warrant licensing; it is a business which from time to time compresses large crowds into a comparatively small space; it attracts large groups of people en masse to a central point, and frequently keeps them there at late and unusual hours in close proximity to the theater’s premises. It is a business operated for profit that necessarily exposes the public to aggravated risks from fire, explosion, structural defects, faulty wiring, ventilation and plumbing and extraordinary traffic hazards—not to mention the actions of criminals who seek out crowds. And, like cabarets, taverns' and other places of public entertainment, it may, by employing sound amplification systems, become a source of noise and commotion at late and unusual hours. The legislative authority is justified in assuming, therefore, that a motion picture house requires more inspection services and policing in the interest of public safety and welfare than does a bookstore, grocery store, department store, real estate office and the like and in requiring that it be licensed.
The power to regulate and prescribe licensing in the public interest thus rests on the traditional view that it is good for society to have businesses of this sont in the hands of noncriminals and persons of reasonably good moral character; that procurers, pimps, racketeers and other criminals —reformed or active—are not apt to have sufficient devotion to the public welfare and safety in the operation of a motion picture theater; that good citizens more likely than bad citizens and criminals will abide by the laws designed for the public protection and spend part of their profits for public safety; that good citizens' will not leave the public safety exclusively dependent upon rigorous inspection and *763policing. Although the judiciary may not share these legislative judgments, this presents no reason in law whatever why they are not within the legislative authority’s competence to make them. The legislative authority has reasonable grounds to reach these conclusions and thus make the licensing of theaters constitutional where, for example, the same reasons might not obtain for licensing bookstores, grocery stores, delicatessens and the like. Greenberg v. Western Turf Ass’n, 148 Cal. 126, 82 P. 684 (1905), aff’d, 204 U.S. 359, 51 L. Ed. 520, 27 S. Ct. 384 (1907).
The right of the state or city to regulate, supervise and exercise control over theaters and places of public amusement is universally recognized and until this case not doubted. Greenberg v. Western Turf Ass’n, supra; Hollywood Theatre Corp. v. Indianapolis, 218 Ind. 556, 34 N.E.2d 28 (1941); People v. Weller, 237 N.Y. 316, 143 N.E. 205, 38 A.L.R. 613 (1924), aff’d, 268 U.S. 319, 69 L. Ed. 978, 45 S. Ct. 556 (1925). See 4 Am. Jur. 2d Amusements and Exhibitions § 12 (1962). Accordingly, the capacity to license and regulate theaters and places of public amusement as a component of the police power is perhaps even more deeply rooted in our law than for many other types of businesses. The reasons, well annotated, are in part set forth in 4 Am. Jur. 2d Amusements and Exhibitions § 12 (1962), as follows:
While the business or occupation of conducting a theater or public amusement is not, in a strictly legal sense, such a public utility or so charged, with a public interest as to deprive the owner or proprietor of his legal right to control and operate it as a private business, the right of the state either directly, or through a political subdivision, usually a municipal corporation, to regulate, control, and supervise places of public amusement under the police power of the state is universally recognized. Indeed, greater discretion is permissible in the regulation of public amusements than in the case of ordinary or useful trades and occupations, both because they are liable to degenerate into nuisances and because they require more police surveillance and police service. Further, these tendencies may justify a greater degree of control in *764regulating certain particular public amusements and exhibitions than others; certain places of public amusement, because of their tendency to promote idleness, disorder, or immorality, or otherwise to subvert the public welfare, are commonly regarded by the courts as peculiarly within the power of the state or its duly empowered subdivisions to suppress or prohibit.
(Italics mine.)
On the question of free speech, it is' difficult to discern where operating a motion picture theater or a cabaret or other theaters, for that matter, differs materially from the other licensed businesses where speech is the medium of communication. Freedom of speech seems indigenous to most of these business operations, and a theater is but one of many forms of commerce or business subject to licensing, regulation and inspection where speech is an essential component of business procedure. Schine Chain Theatres, Inc. v. United States, 334 U.S. 110, 92 L. Ed. 1245, 68 S. Ct. 947 (1948); Binderup v. Pathe Exch., Inc., 263 U.S. 291, 68 L. Ed. 308, 44 S. Ct. 96 (1923). Accordingly, the employment of speech for the conveyance of ideas is no more fundamental to operating a picture show business than it is to innumerable other kinds of businesses. On that point, it should be noted the City of Seattle does not in this ordinance purport to precensor any particular film nor impose any restriction on the communicating of any ideas. The licensing ordinance purports no more than the exercise of the city’s constitutional powers to require applicants for a license to show that they are of reasonably good moral character and whatever criminal career they may have had is in the substantial past.
In considering freedom of speech as it applies to the operation of a theater, one has difficulty in finding where it is anywhere more directly abridged than by the operators of motion picture theaters themselves as a matter of routine business procedure. The audience is not only invited not to but actually prohibited from audibly communicating their ideas to one another during the show either about the *765movie being shown in particular or other subjects in general. As a condition of his contract of admission to the theater, the motion picture theater proprietor thus directly imposes marked restrictions on his customers’ freedom of speech. Talking during the show is ordinarily deemed not only a nuisance to others but subjects the annoying patron to lawful eviction by the proprietor.
If movie patrons insist on exercising their freedom of speech to the point where it denies other patrons of the quiet enjoyment of the show, they may be evicted from the premises. The operator of a movie house or other place of public amusement is under a duty to maintain proper quiet and good order (Edwards v. Hollywood Canteen, 27 Cal. 2d 802, 167 P.2d 729 (1946)), and may use reasonable force to eject one who refuses to leave and persists in noise and disorder. Cummins v. St. Louis Amusement Co., 147 S.W.2d 190 (Mo. App. 1941); Planchard v. Klaw & Erlanger New Orleans Theatres Co., 166 La. 235, 117 So. 132, 60 A.L.R. 1086 (1928). Anyone authorized by law to exercise such powers should, in the public interest, be subject to licensing.
This court’s opinion declaring void the licensing of theaters will directly curtail a reasonable and legitimate capacity for municipal self-government. The power of a state or its municipal subdivisions to supervise theaters and impose reasonable conditions upon the right to engage in some callings, businesses or professions has since colonial times been an attribute of sovereignty and an indispensable ingredient of the general police power to provide for the general welfare and preserve and foster the public peace, health, safety and morals. And none of the licensing provisions, if they are reasonably designed to attain a constitutionally permissible end and do not exact prohibitive and -confiscatory fees, have been deemed a trespass on the freedom of speech regardless of the quantum of free speech employed in operating the licensed business.
Thus, this court has upheld a statute which provides for *766the licensing and regulation of barbers and barbershops (State v. Sharpless, 31 Wash. 191, 71 P. 737, 96 Am. St. Rep. 893 (1903)), and one should assume it would stick to that ruling despite common knowledge that nowhere on the face of .the American scene is speech more freely excerised than in such places. Again, a city ordinance requiring a license for billiard and pool tables, and requiring an application for the license to be filed with the city comptroller and passed on by a license committee and the city council, was held good in State ex rel. Sayles v. Superior Court, 120 Wash. 183, 206 P. 966 (1922). Probably no greater bastion of free speech can be found in the country than in the nation’s pool halls, yet pool hall licensing was sustained again in State ex rel. Reedhead v. Olympia, 122 Wash. 239, 210 P. 371 (1922); and the same rule has been applied with respect to the licensing of dance halls. Bungalow Amusement Co. v. Seattle, 148 Wash. 485, 269 P. 1043, 60 A.L.R. 166 (1928). Plumbers are another example. A journeyman plumber in this country enjoys a reputation for free and colorful speech but ordinances requiring him to take examinations and demonstrate competency to obtain a license were upheld as being within the reasonable exercise of the police power. Tacoma v. Fox, 158 Wash. 325, 290 P. 1010 (1930); Lund v. Bruflat, 159 Wash. 89, 292 P. 112 (1930).
Accordingly, one can find no abrogation of freedom of speech whatever within the context of the First Amendment in 2 Seattle Code § 10.02.100, which requires licenses for the operation of bowling alleys, drive-in theaters, theaters, coffee houses, billiard and pool tables, cabarets, massage parlors, public bathhouses and public dance halls—and other kinds of businesses enumerated in that section. Free speech is an indigenous concomitant of each of these businesses; it is as essential to one as it is to the other. That these businesses flourish in Seattle demonstrates that the freedom of speech amendments yet reign there.
Nor do I think that the City of Seattle is depriving the applicants for a license either of due process of law, or of *767equal protection, or of freedom of speech when it requires them to disclose whether they have ever been convicted of (1) violating any laws relating to intoxicating liquor, gambling, public morality, and decency or fraud, or (2) sale, use, possession, or business concerning narcotic drugs. Nor has the city exceeded its police power in requiring the applicant for a license to state in writing whether the premises upon which the licensed business will be conducted complies with the building code and .the ordinances relating to health and sanitation, and to specify the size of the premises and number of pool and billiard tables, theater seats and number of bowling alleys; nor to require disclosure of the identity of each person sharing in the profits and who are citizens of the United States and those who are not citizens. These demands for information seem to me to ask no more than the city has a right to ask in achieving a legitimate legislative end by reasonable means.
The legislative purpose of the licensing law thus becomes quite clear in the provision requiring the chief of police to investigate the truth of the information set forth in the application and to give his reasons to the city council for whatever objections he may have to the granting or renewal of a license and in the provision that
If the council is satisfied that the statements in the application are true, that the applicant and all persons connected with the business are of good character and that the premises in which the activity sought to be licensed will be conducted comply with the requirements of all ordinances relating to buddings, fire, health and sanitation, and that such premises are situated in a place where such businesses are not prohibited by the Zoning Ordinance or other law and that all other requirements and conditions of this chapter relating to the business for which the license is sought have been met, it shall by resolution direct the city comptroller to issue such license
So far as licensing and due process in granting a license is concerned, this court passed squarely upon the issues of *768the instant case in State ex rel. Pitkanen v. Zittel, 77 Wn.2d 366, 462 P.2d 944 (1969), a unanimous en banc decision denying a mandamus to compel the issuance of a special policeman’s license. We upheld the constitutionality of a city ordinance remarkably similar to the one here questioned where the chief of police had refused to grant a special policeman’s license because the chief had concluded that three arrests, without any conviction, indicated a want of good moral character. The court said, at page 367:
He [the applicant] also urges that the ordinance providing for the issuance of licenses in the discretion of the city manager is unconstitutional because no standards are provided. Standards are provided, however, in section 7.10.030 of the Tacoma City Ordinance, which requires that the applicant must show good character, competency, and integrity, must furnish character references and a bond, and must list any previous police record. Where the activity to be licensed is one in which the public has a legitimate interest which requires its regulation, the vesting of discretion in an executive or administrative officer to determine whether qualifications of this sort exist is within the police power. Tarver v. City Comm’n of Bremerton, 72 Wn.2d 726, 435 P.2d 531 (1967). If the officer makes an arbitrary or capricious decision, that decision is subject to review by the courts in an action such as this. This contention of the appellant is likewise without merit.
As in Pitkanen, the ordinance now before the court makes ample provision for due process to challenge the denial of a license and, similarly, upon showing of good behavior, for a waiver of 5 of the 10-year interval following felony conviction.
If the chief of police, for example, recommends against the granting of a cabaret or massage parlor license to a notorious pimp or prostitute, racketeer or other criminal, the applicant has ample opportunity under the ordinance to challenge the recommendation of the chief of police, to demonstrate that it is ill-founded, and to show that the applicant not only has never been convicted of such an offense but additionally has led an honest, upright and *769moral life. And the same opportunity is available to every applicant for such a license whether the refusal has been based on prior convictions or substantial evidence of criminal activity falling short of actual conviction.
In declaring the freedom of speech as a basis for prohibiting the licensing of motion picture theaters, the court mistakes the medium for the message, the hall for the lecture, the building and furnishings for the film. Plaintiffs had been convicted of publicly showing obscene movies for money; under the city ordinance, this established two grounds for denial of a license, (1) timely conviction of an offense involving moral turpitude, and (2) that within the meaning of the licensing law, they were of bad moral character.
The constitution—particularly the First Amendment providing for freedom of speech—does not prevent a state or the city from seeing to it that certain businesses and callings deemed by the legislative branch to be especially sensitive in the area of public peace, health, safety and morals, are not operated by unrehabilitated felons or others of bad moral character. Thus, it is sound public policy, as well as within the constitutions, I think for the city to take all reasonable steps available to see to it that theaters, pool halls, bowling alleys, cabarets, massage parlors, pawnshops, private detective agencies, and the like, do not fall into the hands of pimps and prostitutes, thugs and racketeers and unrehabilitated felons—and all of the other diverse and sundry malefactors of a big city of whom it can be shown are of bad moral character. Licensing laws, while they do not guarantee such a result, are, nevertheless, only one of a few legal avenues open to provide it.
I would, therefore, reverse.
Hunter, J., concurs with Hale, C.J.