7th Circuit: SOB crime study does not support hours-of-operation ordinance
Annex Books v. City of Indianapolis, No. 09-4156 (7th Cir. Oct. 1, 2010)
SOB crime study does not support hours-of-operation ordinance
Before Easterbrrok, Chief Judge, and Flaum and Rovner, Circuit Judges. Per Curiam.
The 7th Circuit held that the study, Do ‘Off-Site’ Adult Businesses Have Secondary Effects? Legal Doctrine, Social Theory, and Empirical Evidence, 31 L. & Policy 217 (2009) by Richard McCleary & Alan C. Weinstein [SSRN | PDF] does not adequately support an Indianapolis ordinance requiring “adult bookstores to be closed all day on Sunday and between midnight and 10 a.m. on other days.” According to the court, the study “suffers [two] shortcomings . . . it concerns a dispersal ordinance rather than an hours-of-operation limit, and the authors did not attempt to control for other potential causes of change in the number of arrests near adult establishments.” Annex Books offered local evidence “suggesting [the] number of arrests near plaintiffs’ stores did not go down when the revised ordinance took effect, and in some areas arrests rose.” Therefore, the 7th Circuit upheld the district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction against Indianapolis.
COMMENTS
