Stardate 20020225.1149

(On Screen): Prudes have lost another one. The courts have ruled in the past that cities can use zoning to try to keep adult businesses from becoming a nuisance but that they cannot use those laws as an indirect way to completely prevent such businesses from operating.

The rationale was that adult businesses tend to attract "undesireables", and so it makes sense to keep strip joints away from churches and schools and like that. So when it was revealed that a home in Florida was actually "Voyeur Dorm", an internet business, the city tried to use its zoning laws to shut it down. Voyeur Dorm is one of those places which one-upped Jennicam. They took a house and put cameras all through it, and then paid young women to live there in a fishbowl. For a monthly fee, customers could look through any camera in the house any time they wanted via the Internet from the privacy of their own homes. The city said "Adult business; not allowed in residential neighborhoods." A court agreed, but that was overturned on appeal, and now the Supreme Court has refused review so the appellate decision stands.

I think this is the correct answer. The original rationale for the use of zoning laws was to prevent such places from becoming a nuisance. But in actuality, Voyeur Dorm didn't permit customers to visit, and it operated in that area for a long time before anyone even realized what it was. It is evident on the face of it that it wasn't the kind of nuisance that the zoning laws are permitted to control.

The people who tried to use the zoning laws were actually trying to shut it down because they objected to the fact that it was an adult business as such. But what they are doing at Voyeur Dorm is constitutionally protected, and the zoning laws cannot be used to abridge liberty without a really good reason why, and the appellate decision was that no such good reason existed.