NEW ORLEANS, LA – According to reports in the Associated Press, the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals has issued a ruling, without comment, upholding a decision issued by U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. last year, in which Guirola dismissed a lawsuit brought by two strip club owners against Hancock County, MS.The 5th Circuit heard arguments in the case last Thursday, and on Monday a panel of three judges, E. Grady Jolly, William Lockhart Garwood and Carolyn Dineen King, issued the decision upholding Guirola’s dismissal of the case.
The roots of the lawsuit plumb back to 2003, when adult business entrepreneurs Weldon Frommeyer and Kirk Ladner filed building applications with Hancock County seeking “special exception” permits for property off Mississippi State Highway 603, between Lagan Street and Central Avenue.
Prior to Frommeyer and Ladner submitting their proposals, there were no ordinances specifically regulating adult entertainment in Hancock County.
The county’s zoning districts were established by a 1997 ordinance, according to the Associated Press, an ordinance that specified over 80 different legal land uses, but did not mention strip clubs at all – necessitating the “special exception” permits sought by Frommeyer and Ladner.
Four months after Frommeyer and Ladner submitted their applications, the county supervisors adopted one ordinance dictating how such clubs can operate, and a second ordinance prohibiting the sale or consumption of alcohol at businesses wherein employees expose “anatomical areas” or engage in “sexual activities.”
Frommeyer and Ladner retained well-known First Amendment attorney Luke Lirot to represent them in the lawsuit.
“We basically argued that the county was unjustified to place a totally unconstitutional restriction on my clients,” Lirot said following last week’s hearing.
Several months after passing its initial adult entertainment ordinances, the County passed another ordinance that allows for adult entertainment in specially zoned areas. Frommeyer and Ladner opted to push forward with their lawsuit anyway, contending that the restrictions in the ordinance that defines the operating rules for adult businesses made doing business in the county virtually impossible for a topless bar.
Although the property at Lagan Street and Central Avenue where Frommeyer originally planned to open his club has since been annexed by the city of Bay St. Louis, Lirot said his client decided to continue with the appeal, because had Frommeyer been allowed to open the club when he originally applied, he would have opened shop long before the annexation by Bay St. Louis.
No word yet whether the 5th Circuit’s ruling spells the end of the case, or what Frommeyer and Ladner’s options are, going forward.
