ROCKFORD, Illinois – A federal court Wednesday ruled the city’s exotic-dance ordinance unconstitutional, allowing the possibility for strip clubs to start up at just about any bar in the city.
The ruling also will likely cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and damages to James Roddy and Steve St. John, who had challenged the ordinance after trying to set up an exotic-dance club at the former Trattoria Fantini on the corner of North Main and Auburn streets.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled the city’s ordinance “violates the First Amendment.”
“The uniqueness of the ordinance is that it removes nudity from the calculus and seeks to regulate clothed individuals,” the court said in its ruling.
The city can appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. City attorney Kathleen Elliott said the city would have to talk to aldermen before it decided on what to do next.
The city’s ordinance had required any new exotic-dance club to be 1,000 feet from churches, schools, other exotic-dance clubs and residential districts. Fantini’s, now open as the upscale restaurant Table 13, sits only a few hundred feet from a residential area.
Michigan lawyer Allan Rubin, who is representing Roddy and St. John, had argued the city’s ordinance made it illegal for entertainers like Cher and Britney Spears to perform in the MetroCentre.
“Under the ordinance, it applied to people dancing at the local bar,” Rubin said. “They may have intended it to apply to certain things, but it could apply to just about any dancing and entertainment that somebody could present.”
The U.S. District Court in Rockford will likely set a hearing date in the next few months unless the city and the club owners settle out of court on the legal fees and damages.
Federal District Judge Philip Reinhard in June had rejected the argument by the owners of the Moulin Rouge that the city’s exotic-dance ordinance was vague and overbroad and upheld the measure.
Elliott was surprised at the appeals court’s decision.
“I’m surprised, considering I thought Reinhard’s opinion was well-thought-out and he heard the evidence,” Elliott said. “I’m surprised that they disregard his legal opinion and his interpretation of the facts.”
Ald. Doug Mark, R-3, had originally sponsored the ordinance back in December 2002 in an effort to control where exotic-dance clubs could locate. Before the ordinance, a business that qualified for a liquor license also could bring in exotic dancers who can strip down to a thong and bra.
Mark declined to comment on Wednesday’s ruling.
“It’s very disappointing to me for someone who went to court and tried to prove that it was a nuisance issue and not a First Amendment issue,” said Ald. Nancy Johnson, D-8. “And I’d thought we’d made that point very clear.”
Johnson testified in court in April of last year on the negative impact the exotic dance club Bigfoot Lounge had in her ward when it opened in the late 1990s in the 4400 block of Charles Street.