DALLAS — Exxxotica's organizers today filed a reply brief in their suit against the City of Dallas, which blocked the adult entertainment show from a new contract at its municipal convention center.
Dallas city leaders said that the adult exhibition was blacklisted because it violated its previous contract after they claimed city officials found evidence of public lewdness at its first and last event in the Texas city in August.
As a result, Exxxotica filed for a motion for a preliminary injunction against the city, with the city responding just last week.
In its reply brief filed today, Exxxotica lawyers said that the city offered “after-the-fact justifications for their refusal to allow [Exxxotica] to use the convention center for its adult-oriented expo.”
“They tell us, for the first time in their response, plaintiff breached provisions of its agreement with the convention center, violated city and state laws governing public nudity and lewdness, and fraudulently misrepresented the entity that entered into the contract with the convention center in connection with its three-day expo in August 2015,” Exxxotica’s counsel said in the brief.
“The record before the mayor and City Council showed that the expo caused no adverse secondary effects. The chief of police did not equivocate: there was no criminal activity at the expo, there was no criminal activity of a sexual nature or any other nature related to it in the vicinity, and the Dallas Police Department did not receive any reports of an increase in prostitution, human trafficking, or sexual exploitation of children in connection with the event, notwithstanding rumors to the contrary.”
Exxxotica’s counsel went on to discuss the city's resolution Chapter 41A, which it has challenged. The city had charged in their reply brief that Exxxotica doesn’t comply with Dallas' ordinance on sexually oriented businesses and that the expo produced secondary effects that the law was designed to protect.
“In order to pass constitutional muster, then, defendants must show that application of Chapter 41A to plaintiff’s event ‘furthers a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest’ and allows for adequate alternative avenues of communication,” Exxxotica’s counsel said.
“They cannot, however, get past the first hurdle of showing that application of Dallas’s ordinance regulating sexually oriented businesses to plaintiff’s three-day event furthers a compelling government interest,” Exxxotica’s counsel said. “In fact, they cannot even clear intermediate scrutiny’s lower rail of showing that a substantial governmental interest is furthered by the ordinance’s application to plaintiff’s expo.
“Plaintiff’s expo is run like an ordinary trade show. It has exhibits, seminars, presentations and contests."
Exxxotica’s counsel said that the City Council’s “rhetoric” is similar to that of Burbank’s City Council decrying the evils of “hard rock music” cited in a case eventually decided by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“No compelling interest is furthered by applying Chapter 41A to plaintiff’s three-day expo,” Exxxotica’s counsel said. “Nor is banning plaintiff’s trade show from the convention center narrowly tailored to achieve an alleged interest in reducing the adverse secondary effects it claims are associated with plaintiff’s three-day event.”
U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater has scheduled an April 18 hearing on Exxxotica’s motion for a preliminary injunction. Exxxotica had planned to stage a three-day exhibition at the convention center on May 20-22.
