Didn't get to this the other day: Here are the basic arguments made in the Fifth Circuit Court appeal of the still-disputed anti-SOB ordinance from 1997.
A 10-year-old analysis of where sexually oriented businesses in Houston can move to comply with a city ordinance is too out of date to be fair, a lawyer told an appeals court panel Tuesday.However, that's what U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas relied upon in ruling earlier this year that the city could enforce a 1997 ordinance that requires such businesses to be a little more than a quarter of a mile from schools, churches, parks and day care centers.
Houston has grown much more dense since the ordinance was adopted, making acceptable sites tougher to find, attorney John Weston told the panel in the latest challenge of the city's decade-old law regulating adult businesses.
"It's fluid," he said. "For every new church, park or school, the amount of available space is going to contract."
If forced to comply now, 95 sexually oriented businesses in the city would be wiped out, Weston told 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges Edith Brown Clement, James Dennis and Edward Prado.
"What this guarantees is that businesses will close and (free) speech will be dramatically reduced," Weston said.
Patrick Zummo, an attorney for the city, countered that legal precedent requires only that such analyses be done at the time an ordinance is adopted. The Houston analysis showed plenty of alternative locations, he said.
"It only makes sense that those existing businesses have a place to go at the time of enactment and not at some point in the future," Zummo said.
"You can't use an ordinance like this to eliminate these businesses," he said. "That clearly wasn't done here."
The judges didn't indicate when they would rule.