Judge Blocks NYC Zoning Law Against Adult Businesses—For Now

In a case that has been winding through the courts since 2002, a federal judge on Monday prevented New York City from enforcing zoning laws aimed at putting adult entertainment businesses, such as strip clubs and adult bookstores, out of business. The ruling, though it puts a hold on the regulations only temporarily, was considered at least a partial win for the adult businesses, which argue that their activities are protected by the First Amendment, according to a Wall Street Journal report. “Nude dancing and erotic materials nevertheless fall within the ambit of the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees,” Federal Judge William Pauley wrote in his 69-page ruling. But in a statement, New York City lawyers said that “this ruling, as the Court reiterated, says nothing about whether the adult-only businesses will succeed on the merits of their claims.” In a 69-page ruling, the judge said that “the balance of hardships” resulting from an injunction against the zoning laws would fall more heavily on the adult businesses than on the city, according to a WNBC TV report.  Allowing the zoning laws to take effect would cut off “adequate alternative channels” for the adult businesses to exercise their right to free expression, the judge ruled, rejecting the city’s argument that the zoning laws still give adult businesses other places where they can move to comply with the zoning rules—which have been in place since 1995 but never fully enforced—without losing their right to free expression. A judge in Manhattan last year ruled in favor of the city in the nearly-two-decade-long case, striking down the “60-40” rule that allowed adult businesses to operate as long as 60 percent of their space was devoted to non-adult entertainment or services. For example, a strip club that devoted 60 percent of its space to traditional restaurant services would be allowed to operate. But Monday’s ruling appears to at least temporarily reverse that earlier judicial decision. Continued legal challenges have prevented the city from fully enforcing the zoning rules. In his ruling, Pauley said that the zoning laws were a “throwback to a bygone era” and that the city was a dramatically different place than it was in the mid-1990s, when the zoning laws were written. Photo by National Archives and Records Administration