Trop, Inc. d/b/a Pink Pony v. City of Brookhaven
Annotate this CaseThe City of Brookhaven has won the right to ban adult entertainment businesses that sell alcohol. Less than a month after Brookhaven incorporated, its new City Council passed its own "Sexually Oriented Business Code," an ordinance that bans consumption of alcohol combined with fully nude dancing. Of particular importance to Pink Pony, the ordinance, in conjunction with Brookhaven's Alcohol Code, prohibits the sale of alcohol in sexually-oriented businesses and allows only semi-nudity (g-strings and pasties), not full nudity. The Council found that sexually oriented businesses were associated with a wide variety of "adverse secondary effects," including crime, prostitution, public indecency, illegal drug use and trafficking, urban blight and sexual assault. The Council further found that alcohol consumption increased the risk of those effects. Pink Pony sued the City, its Mayor, its City Council members and its City Clerk, claiming that the sexually oriented business ordinance was unconstitutional and that Pink Pony was exempt from the ordinance based on its settlement agreement with DeKalb County. In upholding the trial court's decision, the Georgia Supreme Court held that given "the established record regarding the deleterious effects of alcohol coupled with nude dancing, the trial court did not err by finding that, as a matter of law, Brookhaven's sexually-oriented business ordinance does not unconstitutionally infringe upon Pink Pony's free speech rights."
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