first?

C'mon Kash. Tell us what court this case is in so we don't have to click the link...

Is that a different picture of Kash?

Kash, I simply can't take it when you blog dirty. It drives me mad! It's springtime afterall, girl....

100 bucks that Ellen Cohen is a hag who is pissed that her husband spends too much money of strippers.

Heaven knows I love my strippers, and if each time I go to a strip club I can contribute $5 to a good cause why that makes my heart feel all warm and fuzzy.

The strippers/dancers, though engaging in expressive activity, are also engaging in a commercial activity. It's thus NOT a standard strict scrutiny analysis.

Also, governments are permitted to charge reasonable licensing/permitting fees (e.g., door-to-door solicitors, public rallys, etc.), which this "poll tax" arguably constitutes.

Lastly, it's the dirtbag stripclub owners who are likely most against the tax - not those exercising some version of a First Amendment protected right.

"We wonder if Travis County District Judge Scott Jenkins was listening to Madonna's "Express Yourself" when he made his ruling."

that comment falls under my favorite Perezhilton.com tag, "Gay Gay Gay".

OK, I got a B in Con Law 8 years ago, but I am not quite sure I understand how taxing the PATRONS $5 restricts the DANCERS' rights to free expression.

That's a huge tattoo. Gross.

Judge Jenkins obviously is out of his depth on this one. Do the strippers have some fundamental right to have customers not pay $5 extra?

12:10: The issue is content-neutrality. What if the government taxed the sale of political books at a higher rate than the sale of novels? Even though the government can tax the sale of books generally, the differential would raise First Amendment problems.

12:04,

Back in the Army, that's what we called an "area target."

OK I normally never do legal analysis on ATL but 12:00's post was so absurd it has to be called out for the obvious nonsense that it is:

"The strippers/dancers, though engaging in expressive activity, are also engaging in a commercial activity. It's thus NOT a standard strict scrutiny analysis."

Expression that happens to be part of a business is not the same thing as commercial speech, i.e. advertising. So it could still be strict scrutiny.

"Lastly, it's the dirtbag stripclub owners who are likely most against the tax - not those exercising some version of a First Amendment protected right."

Ummm....these "dirtbags" are against it because it hurts their business. You think that might affect their employees at all? I suppose you think you'll always get paid the same no matter how much business your firm does? LOL

12:04 - it's economics that you need to brush up on. raising prices means the strip club may go bust.

12:00, 12:04, 12:10 - are you serious? Or are your comments a belated April fool's joke? This is a clear-cut content restriction requiring strict scrutiny. It's as easy as they get. I hope for the sake of our profession that you were kidding.

I don't see how sexual assault programs and health care for the uninsured do anything for the betterment of society.

It's great to see Cashmere posting about constitutional law instead of trolling for attention with pictures of herself.

12:00, 12:37 - the supreme court has not required strict scrutiny for nude dancing regulations. under barnes v. glen theatre and pap's a.m. v. city of erie, the court held that intermediate scrutiny analysis is all that's required (and pretty flaccid intermediate scrutiny at that).

12:38- "strip club...go bust." Heh heh.

That's it. The Defeat Ellen Cohen campaign starts now. I can't believe I voted for her and convinced friends and neighbors to vote for her. How can I look them in the eyes when every time they walk into Treasures or Riviera or Babe's or Gold Cup or Rick's or Baby Doll's (former home of Anna Nicole) or Splendor they have to pay an extra five dollars. First they tax the lap dances and I did not speak out because I prefer making it rain . . . It's time to stand up and stop Ellen Cohen.

flaccid intermediate scrutiny...?

Okay, moralists (stripper are BAD, health care is GOOD = end of analysis) ... what if it was a $5 fee on all ballet performances (which performances of other forms of dance were not subject to the fee)...does constitutional scrutiny level change?

Nude ballet performances?

Nude dancing most certainly does NOT get strict scrutiny. Neither do content-based zoning restrictions aimed at other adult-oriented businesses. And Scalia wouldn't even apply the O'Brien test. As far as he's concerned, these "content neutral" restrictions don't even raise a First Amendment issue.

Nude dancing most certainly does NOT get strict scrutiny. Neither do content-based zoning restrictions aimed at other adult-oriented businesses. And Scalia wouldn't even apply the O'Brien test. As far as he's concerned, these "content neutral" restrictions don't even raise a First Amendment issue.

Reading legal analysis on ATL is like watching the Special Olympics. Yea, it's nice to see everyone try, but in the end I really just end up thankful that I don't suffer from the same limitations/handicaps as those analyzing/competing.

Kash should provide us with a YouTube video of exactly what sort of dancing is at issue here. It would really add to our understanding and be another feather in her journalistic cap.

Kash to poledancing!

Kash to representing ATL at the next event, in lieu of Lat making an appearance.

This 'pole tax' stinks because of the link between strip club patronage with sexual assault programs.

This tax is an attack on male sexuality. It is nothing more than Sen. Cohen and her supporters shaking their finger and saying, "Bad men for enjoying naked dancing women. You are obviously dangers to women and you must therefore pay for these sexual assault programs".

As a side note, I would not be surprised in the least if certain feminist groups were behind this tax.

Let men be men without changing or punishing them.

I knew the entry was written by Kash, instead of by Lat, when I saw the photo of an alluring, semi-clothed woman accompanying the post.

Kash is keeping up her continuous string of posting daily photos of smiling, sometimes semi-clothed women (e.g., herself, this stripper, that female HLS prof, that female YLS prof, the UNC undergrad who died). Keep up the good work, my slut!

Agreed, 1:31. The only misstep so far has been her posting of Judge Manatee.

There is an interesting article on the Supreme Court's messy jurisprudence in this area by Amy Adler: "Girls! Girls! Girls!: The Supreme Court Confronts The G-String," 80 New York University Law Review 101 (2005), available at ssrn.com/abstract=875840.
Abstract: "What is it about the nude female body that inspires irrationality, fear, and pandemonium, or at least inspires judges to write bad decisions?"

Thus in the Pap’s case, the U.S. Supreme Court set out to solidify
its position on nude dancing. As in Barnes, the Court agreed that
while nude dancing is expressive conduct, “it falls only within the
outer ambit of the First Amendment’s protection.”47 Again as in
Barnes, a plurality of the Court found that the regulation requiring
dancers to wear pasties and G-strings satisfied the O’Brien test.48 In a
break from Barnes, however, five members of the Court adopted a
new analysis.49 Employing this analysis, the four-member plurality
justified the purpose of the law banning nudity not by an appeal to
morality, but by a concern for “secondary effects.”50 Justice Souter’s
approach in his Barnes concurrence had won the day,51 and eclipsed
the Barnes plurality’s dubious reliance on morality.52
Under the secondary effects doctrine, speech may be regulated
only when it is aimed at combating effects which are not related to the
meaning or “the content of the . . . speech.”53 The Court’s earlier
decision in City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc. had paved the
way for the Pap’s analysis: Renton had permitted the zoning of
“adult” theaters based on evidence of adverse effects on neighborhoods
where such theaters were clustered.54 The ordinance at issue in
Renton applied only to theaters displaying “adult” films.55 Theaters
showing any other kind of films were exempt. It would seem hard to
imagine a law that was more obviously a regulation of speech based
on its content. Yet the Court, in an impressively bold act of illogic,
deemed the ordinance content-neutral. It did so by stating that although the law seemed to single out certain “adult” speech on the basis of its content, the purpose of the law was to combat only secondary effects, and not the content of the speech. Thus the justification
for the law, not the face of the law, became dispositive of its First
Amendment validity.56

Thank you so much for posting about that NYU article. I am both a practicing lawyer and a practicing stripper, so I find these issues really fascinating.
What strikes me most about this Cohen's Law is the twisted justification put forward. In the linked article Kelly Young, the vice president with the Houston Area Women's Center says "it made sense to collect a fee from strip club patrons. 'This is a business that typically has a higher ratio of women who work in the business, and this is a crime that typically has a higher rate of women as victims,' she said.
Um, ok, even if we accept the implication that victims of crimes should be forced to pay for the services they need after being victimized, than why focus on strippers alone? I am going to venture a guess that most secretarial pools have a higher ratio of women working in them, but I seriously doubt anyone would propose a special tax on secretaries to pay for sexual assault services. Cohen's law is simply, as others have pointed out, an underhanded way to attack adult businesses and wrap it up in a noble-sounding cause.

If they want to get more tax revenue just legalize and regulate prostitution and then tax it - just like most other non-prudish civilized countries do..... oh hang, this is America we're talking about.....