SAN FRANCISCO, CA) — Arizona may create laws for sex-related businesses that include requirements that are different from other businesses, like mandating that that they close overnight, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Monday.
“The State may choose to treat adult businesses differently from other businesses so long as it does so for the right reasons, and it has done that here,” Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote in the majority opinion of a three-judge panel for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

An Arizona law forcing sex businesses like adult arcades, video parlors, escort agencies, and nude model studios to close between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. Monday through Saturday and between 1 a.m. and noon on Sunday prompted the litigation.

The 1998 law prompted sex firms, some of which operated 24-hours a day prior, to say that the law violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. The 9th Circuit disagreed.

“The Supreme Court has clearly carved out sexual and pornographic speech as one type of speech that can be subject to reasonable restriction,” the panel said in its opinion.