| Atlanta Area County wins ruling in effort to ban alcohol at strip clubs |
| Written by Maryanne Euthalia |
| Tuesday, 23 February 2010 20:33 |
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Fulton County, presented sufficient proofs to justify an ordinance to ban the possession, consumption and sale of alcohol at all the adult entertainment clubs. The owners of the strip clubs had filed a lawsuit that contended the law that infringed on their free speech rights and the federal judge agreed striking the ordinance as unconstitutional. "This case is a bit different," a common three-judge 11th Circuit panel said on Tuesday. This time around, the district relied on sufficient statistical, scrutiny and subjective evidence as well as studies and testimony to support the efforts to control the negative and secondary effects of combination of alcohol and live nude dancing. This decision has overturned a ruling by a Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Vining, who had found the ordinance very unconstitutional. On this Tuesday, the 11th Circuit sent back the case to Judge Vining for further review. The appeals court decision said the county's evidence had its limitations. The study that the county had relied upon had a lot of shortcomings and that the statistics compiled were also gathered without sufficient controls. The evidence, however, the ruling said, "definitely creates a vivid image of the county in which strip clubs, that served alcohol, played an important and undesirable role. Sex and drug related crimes occurred in and around these strip clubs and the adjoining cheap hotels, and it required law enforcement and the judiciary to invest the resources in fighting the secondary effects." |