SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. — There’s no more nude dancing in Sandy Springs. The city’s trio of gentlemen’s clubs closed several months ago after exhausting their appeals in a 12-year legal battle with the city.
Flashers, Mardi Gras and The Coronet Club & Doll House all shut down their live-nude exotic dance operations after a state judge said in September she would uphold a proposed injunction that would have stopped the clubs from both selling alcohol and allowing nudity.
Sandy Springs had denied the venues alcohol licenses after it formed as a new municipality in 2005. Legal challenges to its zoning ordinance reached the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which eventually dashed the clubs’ hopes. Later, the U.S. Supreme Court also denied review of the ordinance.
Now, one of the clubs, Flashers, which closed its doors on Sept. 6, has filed a federal lawsuit against Sandy Springs, alleging that the club sustained due process and free speech violations, along with Fourth Amendment violations after the club was raided and ordered closed by the city’s fire marshal when it was still operating. Flashers also made a negligence claim against the city.
Flashers’ suit, filed Friday at federal court in Atlanta, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages against Sandy Springs.
According to the suit, Sandy Springs, through its fire marshal, raided and shut Flashers without “meaningful notice” on Dec. 14, 2016.
The suit claimed that in the fall of 2016 city leaders began ordering raids on all three establishments within its borders that offer live nude dance entertainment.
The raids were ordered, Flashers attorney Cary Wiggins wrote, because “the city objected to the message communicated by Flashers as well as by other gentlemen’s clubs and sexually oriented businesses operating within the city.”
“In what the city would call ‘administrative inspections,’ city officials would stop all activity in the clubs (turn off the music, turn on the house lights, stop dance performances and check identification) and segregate patrons from dancers and employees. During this ‘inspection,’ the people patronizing or working at the clubs would not be permitted to enter or leave the premises,” the suit said.
At Flashers, the city’s fire marshal looked for any conceivable violations of city ordinances or even state law to find reason to close the establishment, the lawsuit claims. Before carrying out the raid, the city notified at least one local TV news station, allowing a reporter to ride along and cover the raid as it was occurring.
Wiggins in court documents wrote that the city’s efforts to raid the now-defunct club amounted to a “systemic shortcoming.”
“This systemic shortcoming is especially troublesome here, where the ordinances were applied because of a distaste for erotic messages offered by a nude dance establishment located on a high-profile corridor of the city,” the suit said.
“The defendants’ search of the premises exceeded the narrow scope allowed by the administrative search exception to the warrant clause of the Fourth Amendment," the suit said. “The defendants violated the Fourth Amendment when they entered, remained and searched the premises of Flashers without a search warrant, consent, or exigent circumstances justifying their unlawful intrusion upon the premises.”
Wiggins on Thursday told XBIZ that “we look forward to learning the city’s explanation for its actions.”
Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul did not immediately return a message for comment.
