NEW YORK — A new legal challenge has been mounted to topple New York City’s adult zoning resolution that, if left unchecked, would zone adult bookstores with booths and adult cabarets out of existence.
The Erotica on Friday filed suit in Manhattan federal court, arguing that the 2001 zoning and permitting regulations limiting adult establishments would put them out of business.
Meanwhile, three New York adult cabarets — New York Dolls, Satin Dolls and Lace Gentlemen's Club — have revived their lawsuits over the same regs.
Yesterday, industry attorney Erica Dubno, who represents The Erotica, asked U.S. District Judge William Pauley to approve a coinciding briefing schedule for all four legal challenges. Dubno plans on filing a preliminary injunction on the zoning ordinance on behalf of The Erotica on May 23
“If authorized by the court, oral argument can be held on July 26, which is the date set for oral argument of the cabarets’ related motions for preliminary injunction,” said Dubno in a letter to Pauley, urging him to hear oral arguments in the four cases all at once.
Dubno told XBIZ today that the new litigation is "essential" to safeguard free speech.
"Under New York’s highest court’s decision, reversing the lower courts’ decisions, the city may be able to enforce a law enacted in 2001 to regulate, for the first time, bookstores and other businesses that offer constitutionally protected expression in 2018," Dubno said. "However, the city and world have changed substantially during the last 17 years.
"Virtually all of the places that were permissible for adult businesses to be located in back then have been rezoned or are otherwise unavailable for adult use. This could sound a virtual death knell for private viewing booths in the freest city in the nation."
In its suit, The Erotica is seeking a judgment declaring that aspects of the city’s zoning regulations are “illegal, invalid, null, void, inoperative and unconstitutional on their face and as applied to its store and other bookstores in New York City” that offer some adult expression to the public under the 1st and 14th Amendments.
The zoning regulation prohibits one adult establishment from opening within 500 feet of a school, a church or another adult establishment, the suit said, making it almost impossible to open a new business in Manhattan.
“Under the Amended Zoning Resolution virtually all bookstores with booths will have to (1) close their entire store and silence their expression; (2) close their booths and silence their expression; or (3) continue operating under the specter and threat of criminal charges and/or nuisance abatement proceedings, among other possible sanctions,” according to The Erotica’s lawsuit.
The proliferation of adult establishments have taken a big dip in the Big Apple in the past 25 years. In 1993 there were 177 adult establishments in the city, currently, there are 20, according to the suit.
New York City has held off on enforcing the rules due to years of litigation. The state Court of Appeals upheld the laws last year, resulting in the adult cabarets reactivating their suits at the federal level.
