ST. LOUIS – A store owner who sells adult materials is suing the state for the right to post new billboards along Missouri’s highways featuring women wearing lingerie to advertise his businesses.
John Haltom, who owns 10 stores that sell lingerie, sex toys and adult videos in six states, filed a lawsuit against the Missouri Attorney General’s office last week in federal court in St. Louis. The suit argues that a law passed last year banning sexually suggestive billboards within one mile of highways is unconstitutional.
The law applies to billboards promoting businesses where workers appear nude or where more than 10 percent of the store is used to display sexually oriented material.
Haltom calls his Johnnie ‘O’s stores in the St. Louis suburbs of Florissant and Fenton “lingerie boutiques,” and says the adult items take up only about a quarter of his display space.
The Lincoln, Neb., resident said he used to have seven billboards in the St. Louis area to advertise his businesses, but now there are only two. Signs that were legally in place when the ban went into effect are allowed to remain until mid-2007.
Citing the Missouri law, advertisers are refusing his efforts to post new ones, Haltom said.
“Their basic plan is to eliminate our advertising and put us out of business,” he said. “The citizens of Missouri have to realize it’s the adult stores today, but what’s it going to be tomorrow?”
Haltom has waged legal battles in several states relating to his businesses, and also has faced criminal charges.
Last year, he was sentenced to 30 days in jail for selling an adult video to a minor who was a police decoy at his Dr. John’s Lingerie and Novelty Boutique in Midvale, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. In 2003, he served six months in Nebraska for selling a video ruled obscene at his Omaha store.
Haltom is not the only one trying to fight the billboard law in Missouri.
Passions Video Inc., an adult book store, and Gala Entertainment of KC Inc., a Kansas City strip club, challenged the law.
A federal judge has denied the businesses’ attempts to block the law, ruling the state had a right to regulate businesses to promote a governmental interest. In the case of the billboards, that interest was reducing the negative impact of adult advertising on minors and on traffic safety.
The case is scheduled for trial Sept. 26 in Kansas City, Mo.
Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Lee’s Summit, who sponsored the billboard legislation, dismissed the lawsuits.
“The porn industry is always trying to clothe itself in legitimacy,” he said.
Bartle said the St. Louis lawsuit might have been filed because the one in the Kansas City area has not been successful.
“It’s a little like if they don’t like the answer Dad gave them, they go to Mom,” he said.
Attorney General Jay Nixon’s office said it will defend against the St. Louis lawsuit as aggressively it has against the western district lawsuit.
One of Haltom’s lawyers, Andrew McCullough, said the Johnnie ‘O’s case relies on a strong argument, “simply because we’re not the kind of business this can legally apply to,” he said.
Both Haltom and McCullough acknowledge the displays at the Johnnie ‘O’s stores contain more than 10 percent adult-oriented items. But McCullough said it should take more than that for a store to be considered adult.
He said because people make purchases and then leave, Haltom’s stores do not result in “negative secondary effects,” like urban blight and increased crime that have been associated with adult entertainment.
Bartle said plenty of people support the law, and he’s heard from Missourians who are “fed up with the porn industry’s in-your-face advertising.”
“A lot of people would regard these billboards as anything but sexy,” he said. “They can be considered a real turnoff.”