Petitioner
Coleman A. Young, Mayor of the City of Detroit
Respondent
American Mini Theatres, Inc.
Petitioner's Claim
That city zoning ordinances attempting to prevent concentration of sexually oriented businesses did not violate the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Maureen Pulte Reilly
Chief Lawyers for Respondent
Stephen M. Taylor and John H. Weston
Justices for the Court
Warren E. Burger, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens (writing for the Court), Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Potter Stewart
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
24 June 1976
Decision
The Supreme Court upheld the ordinance as constitutional.
Significance
Young marked the beginning of a new era in Supreme Court rulings on speech, in which the Court began to distinguish certain types of legal speech as offensive and therefore subject to varying degrees of restriction.
In 1972, the city of Detroit, Michigan, passed two amendments to its "Anti-Skid Row Ordinance" dating from a decade earlier. The amendments provided thata theater showing so-called "adult" films could not be located within 1,000 feet of another such establishment or within 500 feet of a residential area. American Mini Theatres, which operated two theaters that exclusively showed sexually explicit but legal films, challenged the 1972 ordinances. After the federal district court upheld the zoning laws, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, finding that the ordinances constituted prior restraints on constitutionally protected forms of speech, overturned this decisions. The mayor of Detroit then petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review of this decision.
The federal appellate court had based its ruling on a 1975 case, Erznoznikv. City of Jacksonville, in which the Supreme Court held that all sexually-oriented material not judged to be obscene should receive full First Amendment protection. Because the Detroit ordinances did not require that a determination of obscenity be made before the city banned outlets for questionablematerial from certain areas, the court was obliged to give establishments like American Mini Theatres the benefit of the doubt.
Supreme Court Holds That Government Can Restrict Certain Types of Offensive Speech
Justice Stevens wrote for only a plurality of the Court; four of the nine justices voted against him, and Justice Powell wrote out his own reasons for supporting the Detroit zoning ordinances. It is hardly surprising that Young proved to be such a contentious case. In declaring that some degree of restriction of otherwise legal speech did not violate the First Amendment, Stevens was breaking new ground. He gave three reasons for upholding Detroit's zoning restrictions: first, they did not entirely ban sexually explicit material; second, most people found such material highly offensive; and third, thiswas not the type of speech whose content merited full First Amendment protection:
Justice Stevens's discriminating approach to the First Amendment has proven to be a genuine departure for the Court, which had previously held that speechwas either fully protected or unprotected. The Court has, however, always had difficulty defining what constitutes legally obscene and therefore unprotected expression. Previously, in Miller v. California (1973), the Courtdefined obscenity as material whose prominent theme is lewd according to community standards, depicts sexual activity in a patently offensive way, and, taken as a whole, "lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." In general, this test requires the Court to make an evaluation in eachcase. Attempts to ban whole categories of sexually explicit speech, such asa push by feminists in the 1980s to ban pornography, have been unsuccessful.But limited restrictions that do not rise to the level of outright prohibition have been tolerated in the area of obscenity and pornography since Young.
Related Cases
City Ordinances and Nude Dancing
In the 1990s, cities and towns across the United States began to combat the spread of nude dancing and other facets of the "adult entertainment" industry.Bills under consideration by a local council in the greater New York City area in 1993, for instance, included measures designating nude-dancing clubs and adult video stores as "public nuisances" which must be located 500 feet ormore from the nearest residential area. Marjorie Heins of the Arts CensorshipProject and Jon Cummings of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), assessing this proposal in Newsday, noted that this strategy was a departure from "a recent wave of efforts in other states to outlaw nude dancing entirely."
In metropolitan Atlanta and a number of other cities, communities have takena different approach, outlawing the sale of alcohol at nude dancing clubs. Ostensibly this is due to claims of higher crime rates surrounding strip clubsthat serve alcohol, but a study by Fulton County, Georgia police found that the police actually received fewer calls for service at nude-dancing clubs than at regular bars which serve alcohol. Nonetheless, the prohibition of alcohol sales, some community leaders hold, will help to reduce the allure of nudedancing.
Sources
Marjorie Heins and Jon Cummings, "New York Forum about Nude Clubs: Strippingthe First Amendment." Newsday, 13 May 1993.
Carlos Campos, "Nudity and Alcohol: Study Disputes Blight Claims." AtlantaJournal and Constitution, 27 November 1997.
Coleman A. Young, Mayor of the City of Detroit
Respondent
American Mini Theatres, Inc.
Petitioner's Claim
That city zoning ordinances attempting to prevent concentration of sexually oriented businesses did not violate the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Maureen Pulte Reilly
Chief Lawyers for Respondent
Stephen M. Taylor and John H. Weston
Justices for the Court
Warren E. Burger, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens (writing for the Court), Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Potter Stewart
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
24 June 1976
Decision
The Supreme Court upheld the ordinance as constitutional.
Significance
Young marked the beginning of a new era in Supreme Court rulings on speech, in which the Court began to distinguish certain types of legal speech as offensive and therefore subject to varying degrees of restriction.
In 1972, the city of Detroit, Michigan, passed two amendments to its "Anti-Skid Row Ordinance" dating from a decade earlier. The amendments provided thata theater showing so-called "adult" films could not be located within 1,000 feet of another such establishment or within 500 feet of a residential area. American Mini Theatres, which operated two theaters that exclusively showed sexually explicit but legal films, challenged the 1972 ordinances. After the federal district court upheld the zoning laws, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, finding that the ordinances constituted prior restraints on constitutionally protected forms of speech, overturned this decisions. The mayor of Detroit then petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review of this decision.
The federal appellate court had based its ruling on a 1975 case, Erznoznikv. City of Jacksonville, in which the Supreme Court held that all sexually-oriented material not judged to be obscene should receive full First Amendment protection. Because the Detroit ordinances did not require that a determination of obscenity be made before the city banned outlets for questionablematerial from certain areas, the court was obliged to give establishments like American Mini Theatres the benefit of the doubt.
Supreme Court Holds That Government Can Restrict Certain Types of Offensive Speech
Justice Stevens wrote for only a plurality of the Court; four of the nine justices voted against him, and Justice Powell wrote out his own reasons for supporting the Detroit zoning ordinances. It is hardly surprising that Young proved to be such a contentious case. In declaring that some degree of restriction of otherwise legal speech did not violate the First Amendment, Stevens was breaking new ground. He gave three reasons for upholding Detroit's zoning restrictions: first, they did not entirely ban sexually explicit material; second, most people found such material highly offensive; and third, thiswas not the type of speech whose content merited full First Amendment protection:
[E]ven though we recognize that the First Amendment will nottolerate the total suppression of erotic materials that have some arguably artistic value, it is manifest that society's interest in protecting this typeof expression is of a wholly different, and lesser, magnitude than the interest in untrammeled political debate . . . Few of us would march our sons and daughters off to war to preserve the citizen's right to see "Specified SexualActivities" exhibited in the theaters of our choice.
Justice Stevens's discriminating approach to the First Amendment has proven to be a genuine departure for the Court, which had previously held that speechwas either fully protected or unprotected. The Court has, however, always had difficulty defining what constitutes legally obscene and therefore unprotected expression. Previously, in Miller v. California (1973), the Courtdefined obscenity as material whose prominent theme is lewd according to community standards, depicts sexual activity in a patently offensive way, and, taken as a whole, "lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." In general, this test requires the Court to make an evaluation in eachcase. Attempts to ban whole categories of sexually explicit speech, such asa push by feminists in the 1980s to ban pornography, have been unsuccessful.But limited restrictions that do not rise to the level of outright prohibition have been tolerated in the area of obscenity and pornography since Young.
Related Cases
- DeJonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937).
- Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949).
- NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963).
- New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964).
- Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).
- Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973).
- Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601 (1973).
- Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205 (1975).
City Ordinances and Nude Dancing
In the 1990s, cities and towns across the United States began to combat the spread of nude dancing and other facets of the "adult entertainment" industry.Bills under consideration by a local council in the greater New York City area in 1993, for instance, included measures designating nude-dancing clubs and adult video stores as "public nuisances" which must be located 500 feet ormore from the nearest residential area. Marjorie Heins of the Arts CensorshipProject and Jon Cummings of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), assessing this proposal in Newsday, noted that this strategy was a departure from "a recent wave of efforts in other states to outlaw nude dancing entirely."
In metropolitan Atlanta and a number of other cities, communities have takena different approach, outlawing the sale of alcohol at nude dancing clubs. Ostensibly this is due to claims of higher crime rates surrounding strip clubsthat serve alcohol, but a study by Fulton County, Georgia police found that the police actually received fewer calls for service at nude-dancing clubs than at regular bars which serve alcohol. Nonetheless, the prohibition of alcohol sales, some community leaders hold, will help to reduce the allure of nudedancing.
Sources
Marjorie Heins and Jon Cummings, "New York Forum about Nude Clubs: Strippingthe First Amendment." Newsday, 13 May 1993.
Carlos Campos, "Nudity and Alcohol: Study Disputes Blight Claims." AtlantaJournal and Constitution, 27 November 1997.
Further Readings
- Greenawalt, Kent. Fighting Words: Individuals, Communities, and Liberties of Speech. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
- Hixson, Richard F. Pornography and the Justices: The Supreme Court andthe Intractable Obscenity Problem. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.
- Jasper, Margaret C. The Law of Obscenity and Pornography. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 1996.
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