March 29, 2000
Cities and States May Put Ban on Nude Dancing, Court Rules
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By LINDA GREENHOUSE
ASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled today that cities and states may ban nude dancing as a way of combatting the crime and other "negative secondary effects" associated with establishments that offer this kind of entertainment.
In its 6-to-3 vote upholding an Erie, Pa., ordinance that requires exotic dancers to wear at least pasties and a G-string, the court's fractured majority did not explain how that requirement would reduce the crime, prostitution, sexual assaults or other problems associated with places where dancers appear fully nude.
"To be sure, requiring dancers to wear pasties and G-strings may not greatly reduce these secondary effects," Justice O'Connor conceded in her opinion for a plurality of four justices. But she said such a regulation needed only to further the government's legitimate interest rather than fully accomplish it.
"It may also be true that a pasties and G-string requirement would not be as effective as, for example, a requirement that the dancers be fully clothed," Justice O'Connor said, "but the city must balance its efforts to address the problem with the requirement that the restriction be no greater than necessary to further the city's interest."
In its decision today, Erie v. Pap's A.M., No. 98-1161, the court took up where it left off nine years ago, when an even more splintered majority upheld a public indecency law in Indiana that also banned nude dancing.
Then, as now, the court ruled that nude dancing -- as opposed to simple public nudity -- was a form of expression that had at least some minimal protection under the First Amendment but that could nonetheless be regulated under an appropriate standard. The court failed in the Indiana case to settle on a standard, and did only marginally better today as Justice David H. Souter changed his mind on the amount of evidence cities needed in order to justify a ban on nude dancing.
