A Hopkins County strip club fire may have been an arson fire, say officials here who believe a recent court ruling sent hopes of regulating sexually-oriented businesses up in smoke.
The proposed ordinance would have affected two clubs. One of them, the Lookers Exotic Dance Club, was hit with severe damage Feb. 6 in a fire. The previous month, Hopkins County Fiscal Court adopted a regulation on sexually-oriented businesses, but it hadn't taken effect when the fire occurred.
And questions arose regarding that ordinance, the Cincinnati Enquirer says, after the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shot down a Paducah, Kentucky ordinance which had been the model for the Hopkins County law.
Hopkins County Attorney Bob Moore tells the paper that, when he learned of the ruling, he recommended the county delay publication of its ordinance until the magistrates could give it further study.
The Kentucky decision involved a Paducah ordinance imposing numerous requirements on adult businesses and entertainers, the Enquirer says. Regina's House of Dolls had challenged that law as an unconstitutional impediment to free speech and expression.
It required those applying for adult business licenses to submit fingerprints, Social Security numbers, tax ID numbers, and whether they'd been convicted of any sexually-related offense within the previous three years. And the Paducah law let individuals appeal denials, but the Circuit Court declared the law didn't guarantee judicial review within any particular timeframe, the Enquirer says.
