Strip Club Cover Charge Is Legal [View all]
Strip Club Cover Charge Is Legal
DALLAS (CN) - The U.S. Supreme Court refused a request from the state's strip club industry to review whether Texas' $5 cover charge violates free speech.
Texas' Sexually Oriented Business Fee Act - or "pole" tax - became law in 2007 and was intended to fund sexual assault and low-income health insurance programs.
The all-Republican Texas Supreme Court unanimously ruled in August that the fee was constitutional, that the fee is too small to be a burden on free speech and that the state has a legitimate interest in fighting the secondary effects of violence associated with adult entertainment and alcohol.
Justice Nathan Hecht wrote that the tax was not directed at the expression of nude dancing, but at the "secondary effects of nude dancing when alcohol is being consumed." He suggested that businesses can "avoid the fee altogether simply by not allowing alcohol to be consumed."
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/30/43441.htm
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