The Missouri Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments concerning the state’s appeal of a decision by a Cole County Circuit Court Judge who threw out adult entertainment amendments last August. The judge cited that the Missouri Constitution stipulated that bills cannot be amended during passage to change their original purpose.
According to the Kansas City Star, the judge “also ruled that provisions of the adult entertainment amendments prohibiting customers and employees younger than 21 at adult-oriented establishments were unconstitutional.”
“Eighteen, nineteen and twenty-year-olds are not minors,” Judge Callahan told the publication, “and the state may not limit persons of majority age from engaging in lawful expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution without a substantial and direct connection to adverse secondary effects, a showing that has not been made.”
The report went on to say that during the oral arguments before the Supreme Court, “Assistant Attorney General John Clubb argued that both the anti-drug law and the subsequent adult entertainment amendments were aimed at the same purpose, namely to deal with crime, and that purpose was reflected in the final title of the bill, which was changed to deal with crime.”
To that, Chief Justice Michael Wolff asked how restrictions on adult businesses related to crime, Clubb said “the law imposed and defined new criminal penalties, those aimed at enforcing the new regulations.” He also said the measure was “aimed at preventing the so-called adverse secondary effects of adult businesses crime, prostitution and harm to minors.”
Tom Rynard, an attorney for the adult entertainment businesses, told the Star that the title of “crime” on the bill was overly broad. “The purpose of the bill was to enact new restrictions on adult businesses, not to address crime,” he said.
In regards to Callahan’s ruling requiring that only persons 21 or over could be employed by or be customers of adult entertainment establishments, the Star reported that Judge Stephen Limbaugh asked why, if that was so, “states could bar those under 21 from drinking.”
In response, another adult industry attorney, Richard Bryant, said “those restrictions are allowed under the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which repealed Prohibition.
“The law in question dealt with the First Amendment,” he said.
The implications of this appeal are very important. The law in question would ban full nudity and lap dances in exotic dance clubs and require that semi-nude dancers refrain from touching customers and stay10 feet away from them, behind 2-foot-high railings.
Portions of this courtesy of the Free Speech X-Press, the weekly newsletter of the Free Speech Coalition. More info at www.freespeechcoalition.com.
