Adult Business Regulation

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The Federal District Court for the District of North Dakota last week denied a request for a preliminary injunction that would have forced the City of Fargo to allow a “premier adult toy retailer” to open a downtown location. 

The case arose out of a zoning dispute between plaintiff “Romantix” and Fargo’s planning department.  Romantix considered itself just another retailer eligible to locate downtown.  City officials disagreed, saying that Romantix’s business of selling sexual devices instead made it an “adult bookstore,” which the City prohibits downtown, and that the City would not issue a change-of-use permit for a prohibited use.Continue Reading Federal District Court: No Preliminary Injunction to Prohibit Fargo from Excluding Adult Toy Store Downtown

In a victory for plaintiff B&G Opa Holdings’s “Klub 24,” a federal district court recently struck down an ordinance used to shutter a strip club that briefly opened in a suburb north of Miami.  Three months after an Opa-locka, Florida licensing clerk stamped “approve” on B&G’s application for a “playhouse,” the city returned to shut down the operation.  Opa-locka explained that it had failed to run that use through its adult-entertainment special use permitting scheme and that Klub 24 was therefore operating without a license.

Klub 24’s Chained Doors Following City Shut-Down. Source: Miami Times

Litigation followed.  Adopting the magistrate’s recommendation, the district court granted summary judgment on B&G’s claims that the city’s ordinance unconstitutionally prohibited all adult-entertainment uses and also gave the city too much discretion to prohibit such uses.

In what appears to have been some administrative bungling—and perhaps some misdirection from B&G—the city first allowed Klub 24 as an “other club” in January 2018.  When it became clear that Klub 24 was in fact a
Continue Reading Florida City’s Special Use Restriction on Strip Clubs Held Unconstitutional

A billboard for Lion’s Den (not a truck trailer). Source: i70signshow.com.

In late April, in a case filed by an adult bookstore challenging the application of Kentucky’s Billboard Act to one of its advertisements, a federal judge of the Western District of Kentucky found the entire Billboard Act to violate the First Amendment.

Lion’s Den is a chain of adult “superstores” with locations along major highways throughout the Midwestern United States.  At one particular location along I-65 in Kentucky, Lion’s Den affixed one of its billboards to the side of a truck trailer, such that it was visible from the highway.  The Kentucky transportation department ordered Lion’s Den to remove the sign, on the grounds that it was not secured to the ground and located on a mobile structure and because the store lacked a permit for the billboard.  The basis for the state’s order was that the Kentucky Billboard Act prohibited the sign.  Under the statute, however, the regulations in question were only applied to off-premises signs.
Continue Reading Federal Judge Rules Kentucky’s Billboard Act Unconstitutional In Its Entirety

Déjà Vu of Nashville, Inc. is a business engaged “in the presentation of female performance dance entertainment to the consenting adult public.”  More prosaically, Déjà Vu operates a strip club.  That business, you will not be surprised to learn, has its detractors.  After those detractors found themselves unable to prevent Déjà Vu from operating as a permitted use in downtown Nashville, they took aim at Déjà Vu’s planned valet service, which was to be operated by a third party.  They succeeded in persuading the city to deny the permit application for that valet service.  In return,
Continue Reading Tennessee District Court Dismisses Strip Club’s First Amendment Claim

The Dallas Convention Center. Source: dallassports.org.

In October of this year, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an operator of an adult entertainment convention called “Exxxotica” had standing to challenge the City of Dallas, Texas’s 2016 decision not to enter into a contract allowing the event. The appeals court’s decision reversed a prior ruling by the federal district court dismissing the case.

In 2015, Three Expo Events, L.L.C., held the Exxxotica event at the Dallas Convention Center. The event, which featured near-nudity and a variety of suggestive activities, caught the attention of community members who believed that the event was immoral. These protesters then asked Dallas’s mayor to prohibit a second annual convention, and the mayor obliged. In 2016, the city refused to renew the event’s contract, and the city council approved a resolution prohibiting the same. Three Expo Events then filed suit, alleging First Amendment violations.

Because the city council’s resolution only prohibited Three Expo Events, and not its subsidiary—which would have been the party to the convention center contract—the district court found that Three Expo Events lacked standing to challenge the city’s decision.
Continue Reading Appeals Court Finds That Dallas Adult Convention Case Can Proceed

The Gentleman’s Playground in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Source: Yelp

This post was authored by Otten Johnson summer associate Lindsay Lyda.  Lindsay is a rising third-year law student at the University of Colorado Law School.

A few weeks ago, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s summary judgment…

A Hustler Hollywood store in Fresno, California. Source: KSFN.

Last month, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s denial of an adult business’s motion for preliminary injunction against Indianapolis.  The appeals court found that the business, Hustler Hollywood (HH), was unlikely to prevail on the merits of its…

Webcast— Special Topics in Planning and the First Amendment: Signs, Adult Businesses, Religious Land Uses, and More

December 14, 2017

1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. EDT

CM | 1.50 | Law

CLE 1.50 through Illinois State Bar

The Planning and Law Division of the American Planning Association is pleased to host the upcoming webcast Special…

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new book, Local Government, Land Use, and the First Amendment: Protecting Free Speech and Expression.  The book is published by ABA Publishing, and was edited by the editor of Rocky Mountain Sign Law, Brian Connolly.  Twelve authors contributed to the book, which contains chapters…