San Bernardino- Whether it makes an honest mistake or deliberately lies, no city government should get away with trampling the civil rights of business owners, an attorney for a San Bernardino strip club told state Supreme Court justices Wednesday.

“You’re dealing with politically motivated people,” Flesh Club lawyer Roger Jon Diamond [pictured] said. “Our only hope is to come to the court and get protection.”

Attorneys for the nude club and the city squared off before the state high court Wednesday in a fight over whether the city government should pay a $1.4 million judgment to the club for hurting its business.

Representing San Bernardino, attorney Christopher Lockwood said officials simply made a mistake when they overstated the number of locations where they would be willing to have the Flesh Club operate. Severely punishing the error could impede governments statewide from enforcing city codes, he said.

Wednesday’s court appearance was not related to the club’s current eight-month closure under the state Red Light Abatement law, which targets brothels.

The issues before the court have been working their way through lower tribunals since January 1995, when city officials won a preliminary injunction requiring that dancers at the Flesh Club remain clothed.

To obtain the order, city officials had to convince a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge that they had a right to enforce zoning rules prohibiting nude entertainment in a family-oriented business district.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that nude dancing qualifies as expression, similar to art or speech, protected by the First Amendment. Any government that seeks to prohibit strip clubs in one location must show that its territory includes ample alternate locations where such clubs are permitted.

In 1995, seeking an injunction against the Flesh Club, city officials claimed it had flouted zoning laws. They cited locations comprising more than 224 acres where they claimed the club could operate legally. The judge issued an injunction prohibiting nudity at the Hospitality Lane club pending a hearing.

The owners claimed that amounted to a closure order, and the Flesh Club remained shuttered for four years.

In 1999, a state appeals court found San Bernardino’s zoning regulation to be unconstitutional, in part because the city overstated the number and size of alternative locations. City Attorney Jim Penman said a former city planner applied the wrong standard in appraising alternate lots. A corrected count shows about 80 acres available, Penman said.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Supreme Court Justice Ming W. Chin repeatedly asked whether the city’s original, higher count was decisive in winning the 1995 injunction and whether the court should order a more thorough investigation into the discrepancy.

Diamond said the case file already contains all the information the justices need to appraise the city’s actions.

“We don’t deal with the question of good faith or bad faith, intent or no intent,” he said. “Even in the absence of misrepresentation, we argue for liability.”

In an interview, Penman said if the court does require a new inquiry, the city can show that even with the smaller number of alternate sites, the Flesh Club could have moved.

Diamond said that’s not true. He said he hopes the court sends a strong message that political leaders should be more careful in applying zoning power. They are too prone to bow to constituents’ distaste for adult bookshops or strip clubs and try to force the businesses out, he said.

They typically justify the tactics by offering alternate locations that violate their own zoning codes or make no sense because they are too inaccessible to patrons or too difficult to develop, Diamond said.

“They should be very careful when they’re making their surveys,” he said in an interview. “Instead, they figure, ‘If it’s wrong, it’s wrong.’ ”

Diamond is invoking the federal Civil Rights Act, enacted shortly after the Civil War to protect minorities from politically popular prosecution. Infringing on the rights of a pariah — the proprietor of an adult-oriented business — might be politically popular today, Diamond conceded. But such persecution still places fundamental civil rights at risk, he said.

Lockwood said the California League of Cities has filed a brief in the case, arguing that if the Supreme Court lets the $1.4 million judgment stand, its impact could extend well beyond San Bernardino. A lower court ruling set aside any lid on liability for cities that enforce an ordinance later found to be unconstitutional. With that limit removed, cities would find code enforcement cost-prohibitive, Lockwood said.

The high court has 90 days to rule. It can let the judgment stand, find the city did nothing wrong and void the judgment, or send the case back to a lower court for a hearing on whether city officials intentionally misstated the number of alternate locations.

Whatever the justices decide, both sides predicted an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.