DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Attorneys for a local all-nude strip club are preparing to take their fight against the city's anti-nudity ordinance to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We've already prepared a jurisdictional brief for the U.S. Supreme Court,” Brett Hartley, one of the attorneys representing Lollipops Gentlemen’s Club, told the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
The Supreme Court does not have a good record of hearing these types of cases, but Hartley — who will argue the case as a prior restraint of free speech issue — said he's optimistic about their chances.
According to the report, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals refused Wednesday to give Lollipops a rehearing in a case in which the court upheld the city's nudity ordinance, overturning an earlier lower court judge's ruling that the ban was unconstitutional.
Local authorities have not started enforcing the new ordinance yet, but are preparing to send out letters to Daytona Beach’s handful of all-nude clubs, warning them that they will be taking action before the month ends. The nudity ban mandates that if a club sells alcohol, or is within 500 feet of a business that sells alcohol, dancers must wear bikinis.
Hartley told the News-Journal that if Lollipops eventually wins the case — which stretched all the was back to 2001 —, the court cases and a police crackdown could result in the city losing millions of dollars.
“They say these clubs lead to rape, prostitution, assault and battery . . . but they've never had any empirical evidence of that,” Hartley said.
