Inc. Young v. American Mini Theatres - 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 or more from the nearest residential area. Marjorie Heins of the Arts Censorship Project 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 taken a different approach, outlawing the sale of alcohol at nude dancing clubs. Ostensibly this is due to claims of higher crime rates surrounding strip clubs that 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 nude dancing.