MIAMI - A federal district court has ruled gay adult studio Flava Works does not have to move its live-cam website's models and equipment out of a house in one of Miami's tony residential neighborhoods.
Basing her summary judgment on the 2001 case Voyeur Dorm L.C. v. City of Tampa - in which the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled "City code cannot be applied to a location that does not, itself, offer adult entertainment to the public" - U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke granted one of Flava Works' claims against the City of Miami and dismissed the other six as moot.
The case began in mid-2007, when the City of Miami Code Enforcement Board ordered Flava Works to move its CocoDorm operation out of the Miami residential neighborhood because the area was not zoned for adult businesses. In September 2007, Flava Works filed suit against the city, claiming CocoDorm is not an adult business as the city defines such things because the house has no brick-and-mortar traffic. Instead, CocoDorm's customers visit it on the Internet, where they are able to watch the house's young residents do what boys do in group-living situations when webcams are trained on them 24/7/365.
Although the court agreed with Flava Works on the cyberspace vs. physical space argument, the judge declined to address state and federal constitutional issues including free speech, equal protection and interstate vs. intrastate commerce.
"We have fought very hard on this and never once did we lose faith," said Flava Works CEO Phillip Bleicher. "We're pleased with the case's ruling and to know that justice has prevailed on our side."
Bleicher also vowed to go after the individuals or groups that started the fuss in the first place.
"The City of Miami was first made aware of CocoDorm by an anonymous packet distributed amongst the dorm's neighbors and to local news agencies," he said. "Flava Works will now seek out the individuals and/or companies who sent these packets which contained defamatory documents."
A PDF of the ruling is available online.
