October 1997: “Cleburne, Texas: Why and How Our City Organized A Joint County-Wide Sexually Oriented Business Task Force”
Why and How Our City Organized A Joint County-Wide Sexually Oriented Business Task Force
Regina Atwell, City Attorney, 10.27.1997
html / pdf (599.42 kb)
In the last decade numerous city ordinances and county orders have been adopted regulating SOBs. Accordingly, case law grows monthly on the subject. Regarding the legality of SOB ordinances, several excellent papers and books have been written discussing topics such as content neutrality, precision of definitions, hours of operation (“time”) restrictions, zoning (“place”) regulations, licensing and interior (“manner”) regulations, and amortization. But after several years of being involved in the drafting of SOB ordinances, I have only found one resource on “how” to make the legislative record that is often critical to the validity of your ordinance. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide assistance to you in the important aspects of organizing, drafting and adopting a SOB ordinance or amendment to your current SOB ordinance. Please be aware that the courts often address “how” an ordinance was adopted when discussing whether the court finds the ordinance to be content-neutral.
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