Connecticut- A strip joint owner in Connecticut was all smiles yesterday after a federal judge ruled that lap dancing is a form of “erotic expression” that government must allow.

“I’m not a choir boy, but I’m not a pimp either,” Mario Pirozzoli, owner of Centerfolds in Berlin, Conn., told the Daily News after his strippers got the green light to, ahem, express themselves on the laps of his customers.

Federal Judge Warren Eginton ruled in a decision made public this week that lap dancing and simulated sex acts by strippers are protected by the First Amendment.

“A government cannot constitutionally regulate erotic expression with such stringent restriction that the expression no longer conveys eroticism,” Eginton wrote.

The ruling came after the nightclub challenged the town’s enforcement of a local law banning simulated sex in such establishments.

“What Michael Jackson did, touching himself on television, is worse than anything my dancers do,” Pirozzoli said. “My clientele doesn’t want that kind of interaction. I’m a class act.”

New York officials said they’d study Eginton’s ruling before deciding whether it could apply here.

The state Liquor Authority allows topless or bottomless dancing in licensed clubs only when the performer is at least 6 feet from the closest patron and is on a stage at least 18 inches high.

However, the agency does not regulate activities in so-called juice bars, because they’re not allowed to sell alcoholic beverages.