JACKSONVILLE, FL — A federal appeals court in Jacksonville, FL, seems poised to uphold county ordinances that severely restrict activities at adult businesses based on possibly flawed assumptions about how the businesses affect a community’s quality of life.On Monday, the three-judge panel declared courts must consider whether legislation that attempts to impose limits on First Amendment rights was conceived based upon “substantial evidence” of harmful effects. Legislative bodies need not prove the evidence is factual, the court added, but they must prove they acted reasonably with regard to the evidence.

“The court doesn’t have to find that the legislature was right,” according to Judge James C. Hill. “It only has to find a rational basis” for the legislative body’s actions.

Attorney Luke Lirot, who represents three cabarets that are suing Hillsborough County over its sexually oriented business ordinances, urged the judges to overturn a lower court’s decision that favored the county. Lirot said the evidence of harm county commissioners considered before passing the ordinances is faulty, and therefore any laws based upon that evidence have a constitutionally impermissible chilling effect on free speech.

Lirot wants the appellate judges to order a federal trial so a jury can decide whether Hillsborough’s county commissioners were unduly swayed by data Lirot said is incomplete and biased. The ordinances are based on data from outside the local area, according to Lirot, and the outside data conflicts with local data indicating no clear increase in crime in the neighborhoods surrounding his clients’ establishments.

If the court upholds the lower court’s ruling, dancers at gentlemen’s clubs in Hillsborough County will be required to maintain a six-foot buffer zone between themselves and patrons, and the clubs will not be allowed to serve alcoholic beverages. In addition, adult stores no longer will be allowed to maintain private viewing rooms, and all adult-business employees will need to pass criminal background checks.

The ordinances were approved in September 2006.