Meeting the Sin Laws: Constitutional Law

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Constitutional Law

Meeting the Sin Laws

Musings on laws affecting adult entertainment, alcoholic beverages and other "vice" industries

Post Frequency: 1/day

Last Entry: August 20, 2008 at 12:53:00

Chilling speech, Un-chilling beer

Posted on August 20, 2008
Last Friday the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued this decision.It concerns an Ohio liquor regulation (Rule 52) that bans "nudity" and "sexual activity" in alcohol-licensed establishments. As drafted, Rule 52 prohibits not only nudity in performances having literary, artistic or political value, it bans even ?the exposure of any device, costume, or covering which gives the appearance of or simulates? nudity...

Express [read "pierce"] yourself

Posted on August 16, 2008
Your bling is not you.The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued an unpublished decision yesterday concerning a Brevard County "School Board written policy that prohibits the wearing of non-otic pierced jewelry by students in the Brevard County public school system...

Another Georgia town celebrates closing of strip club

Posted on August 11, 2008
This picture will save at least 1,000 words: "Byron City Councilman Michael Chidester applauds as the Cafe Erotica sign falls Friday morning in Byron." And another 1,000 words: "Jeff Laborg, pastor at Second Baptist Church in Warner Robins, gives a shout and waves a Bible in the air as the Cafe Erotica sign comes down Friday morning in Byron...

Crisis averted for famous liquor license(s)

Posted on August 08, 2008
The Bellini cocktail will remain a menu item at Cipriani, where the drink achieved signature status. (You'll still need $20.95 to buy one, though.)The New York Times reports that the "State Liquor Authority voted 2 to 1 on Wednesday to accept the family?s $500,000 settlement offer, rather than revoke its liquor licenses for more than four dozen violations of state law at nine venues, including the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, Harry Cipriani at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel and Cipriani Wall Street...

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Today's wine-shipping decision ...

Posted on August 07, 2008
... arrives courtesy of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.In this case the plaintiffs, who are described as "oenophiles who want easier access to wine from small vineyards in other states," challenged two provisions of Indiana law. These provisions state that wineries inside and outside Indiana may ship to customers, if (a) there is one face-to-face meeting at which the buyer?s age and other particulars can be verified; and (b) the vintner is not allowed to sell to retailers in any state as its own wholesaler...

Reverse Flow

Posted on August 07, 2008
"City owes $85,000 for pulling strip club's licence," reports TheSpec.com. According to the article, "[t]he city's licensing committee pulled the defunct strip club's licence in July 2006 because of inactivity. The decision, which was upheld by council, quashed plans to reopen the strip joint...

Another town buys an adult business

Posted on August 01, 2008
They're all the rage these days."A small town in northeast Georgia has bought a strip club, but it's not planning to get into the adult entertainment business," reports MSNBC.com here.The town of Lavonia is not alone; other cities have taken the plunge.

The Sound of Silence

Posted on July 20, 2008
Your application to plop an adult bookstore in our town's commercial shopping center is hereby ...Dennis Loring filed a "site plan application seeking to locate an adult, sexually oriented book and video store in a shopping plaza in North Haven." The commission said no...

Have you left your bag of firearms unattended?

Posted on July 04, 2008
Happy July 4th!!Are you flying over the holiday? If you're passing through Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Int'l Airport, you'll need to leave your "arms" at home. For now at least. Sound ridiculous? To GeorgiaCarry.Org, Inc. and Georgia Representative Timothy Bearden (R - Villa Rica) it does...

Are obscenity prosecutions on the rise?

Posted on June 23, 2008
Maybe. Or maybe not."What?s Obscene? Google Could Have an Answer" appears in tomorrow's edition of The New York Times. The question is whether Internet data --- specifically, Google search results --- may be used at trial to gauge "community standards," whatever that means...

Georgia's wine sales to go online

Posted on June 09, 2008
Georgia winemakers want your home address and (unexpired) MasterCard number.The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports here that, "[s]tarting July 1, Georgia residents can have any winery ship to them up to 12 cases a year as long as someone 21 or older signs for the shipment...

Borderless Bookstore

Posted on June 08, 2008
I like happily-ever-afters.In West Chester, Pennsylvania, the "St. Agnes Church has dropped its challenge to a zoning hearing board decision involving Feminique Boutique, a sex novelty shop near the church," reports the DailyLocal.com here. Why? Well, we can only guess, but there is no definition for what the store is (i...

Slots & Sovereignty

Posted on June 04, 2008
It's a video poker case.Over at SCOTUSblog, they're betting that that it is taken up by the Supreme Court. I won't (meaning, I can't) handicap the odds. The case concerns Jimmy Martin and his company, Lucky Strike, which have sought to enjoin enforcement of two South Carolina statutes criminalizing certain "device[s] pertaining to games of chance...

Dem is fight'n words

Posted on May 14, 2008
This free-speech lawsuit requires us to determine the present scope of the ?fighting words?doctrine. The setting is a neighborhood feud. The case features an unsightly, 38-foot recreational vehicle stored on a residential driveway in suburban Chicago, a neighborhood petition drive to force its removal, and a derogatory Halloween yard display erected in retaliation against the neighbors who led the petition drive...

Alcohol & Big Business

Posted on May 11, 2008
"Michael Cortez never dreamed he'd be heading to the highest court in the state over a six-pack of beer. But the vice president and general counsel for Sheetz Inc. will do just that Wednesday when his central Pennsylvania convenience-store chain appears before the Supreme Court to resolve a dispute over where beer can be sold in the state...

The only thing we have to fear, is beer itself ...

Posted on April 14, 2008
... and not one State's attempt to jack-up the tax on it -- or says Orin Kerr of The Volokh Conspiracy here. A California assemblyman, Jim Beall, has "proposed raising the beer tax by $1.80 per six-pack, or 30 cents per can or bottle. The current tax is 2 cents per can...

Milwaukee's Best Light -- $3.79 for a 16 oz. six-pack!

Posted on April 03, 2008
"A federal judge has overturned Virginia's decades-old ban on alcohol-related advertising in college newspapers, saying that the law violates the student publications' constitutional right to free speech," reports AP in the Washington Post here. Most alcohol-advertising bans are sitting ducks for constitutional challenge if they're (threatned to be) enforced because there's typically little (if any) evidence supporting the speech ban...

Bang

Posted on March 29, 2008
"Guns, Fear, the Constitution, and the Public's Health," written by Garen J. Wintemute, M.D., M.P.H., will appear in the April 3 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. (HT to You Don't Say.)Dr. Wintemute notes that "the $2 billion annual costs of medical care for the victims of gun violence are dwarfed by an estimated overall economic burden, including both material and intangible costs, of $100 billion...

E-wine & ID

Posted on March 20, 2008
An interesting decision concerning Wine.com which you can access here (eVineyard Retail Sales-Massachusetts, Inc. vs. Alcoholic Bev. Control Comm'n, SJC-09948 March 18, 2008).One of the vinous Internet giant's wholly owned subsidiaries, eVineyard Retails Sales-Massachusetts, Inc...

Religion & Poles

Posted on March 18, 2008
(Source.) A follow-up to my post below. The picture is entitled, you guessed it, "Peep Show."Now that just ain't right.

Politics & Poles

Posted on March 18, 2008
This month Harper's Magazine is featuring Mr. Fish, 178 Cartoons from 2004 to 2008. Mr. Fish, we're told, "lives in Los Angeles, California. He never asked to be born. Occasionally, he laughs his head off. His mother has no idea what he's up to. She cries easily...

Percy L. Julian, Jr., Esq.

Posted on March 02, 2008
"The legal community ? particularly the First Amendment field ? lost a giant recently in Wisconsin-based civil rights attorney Percy L. Julian Jr., who died Feb. 24 in Madison at age 67," laments David L. Hudson, Jr. of the First Amendment Center here...

Stuff

Posted on February 23, 2008
"Breasts are not genitalia, and drivers don't gawk at the word 'love' ? a First Amendment problem," is the title of an Althouse post. In case you're wondering, the buttocks is not genitalia either, although some have believed it so."Millions May Be at Stake in Suit Over Hit NBC Game Show" appears in a Law...

Texas sexual device ban held unconstitutional

Posted on February 13, 2008
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just reviewed Texas's obscenity statute, and here's how the opinion begins:This case assesses the constitutionality of a Texas statute making it a crime to promote or sell sexual devices. The district court upheld the statute?s constitutionality and granted the State?s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim...

Georgia law continues to honor the Sabbath

Posted on February 12, 2008
"Despite public sentiment, Sundays likely to stay dry for now," is an article which appears in today's Atlanta Journal Constitution. If you haven't heard, Georgia is contemplating (again) a Sunday sales bill that would allow communities to decide whether they want to allow beer, wine and liquor retail package sales on Sundays...

Virginia Beach police seize photos from Abercrombie store

Posted on February 03, 2008
If I didn't know Virginia Beach, I'd have guessed this was a publicity stunt. But it's not. According to the article from Hampton Road's PilotOnline.com (via The Drudge Report),Police, saying they were responding to citizen complaints, carted away two large promotional photographs from the Abercrombie & Fitch store in Lynnhaven Mall on Saturday and cited the manager on obscenity charges...

I like what you're saying, so I won't zone you out.

Posted on February 01, 2008
Over at The Volokh Conspiracy Ilya Somin has posted that Berkeley is "considering enacting a zoning ordinance to restrict [military recruiters'] location[s] in much the same way as other cities use zoning to restrict or ban businesses selling pornography...

Everything is new(d) again

Posted on January 31, 2008
I've been working and playing.My playtime has been with our first baby, Ms. Audrey Jane Wiggins. She's a hoot. Born on January 8, she's been a non-stop machine, keeping her parents (especially mom) busy changing, feeding, rocking, gazing and laughing...

"Rumrunners, Moonshiners and Bootleggers" is ...

Posted on December 08, 2007
... the name of The History Channel program that I just watched. The promo:Heroes who fight tax collectors and moral crusaders, or just common criminals? Like it or not, America was built by rumrunners, moonshiners, and bootleggers--even founding father John Hancock was a smuggler...

I was at the library, Ociffer

Posted on December 03, 2007
After pulling over a weaving car, the officer asks, "Have you been drinking?" The driver answers yes. Then the officer asks, "Where?" Well, look out if your establishment's name is the next sound heard. I just read "N.J. Sharpens Liquor-law Policing," in USA Today...

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