AUSTIN, Texas – Late last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law S.B. 315, a bill which raised the legal age for working at strip clubs, adult bookstores and other “sexually oriented businesses” (SOBs) to 21.
Presented as a measure to combat human trafficking, the most immediate impact of the S.B. 315 has been to put out of work hundreds of people – not just exotic dancers, but cashiers, servers, counter clerks, bartenders, etc. – already employed by such businesses.
Now, in a predictable development, Texas has been sued over the new law.
In the lawsuit, filed by four individual plaintiffs along with a company called Texas Entertainment Association Inc., the plaintiffs assert that the state has violated their rights under both the U.S. and Texas constitutions.
“While this legislation was packaged in good intentions—combatting the scourge of human trafficking and protecting young adults from the evils of sexual exploitation—it employs constitutionally illegitimate means: depriving ordinary people just like the individual Plaintiffs of their occupational, associational, and expressive liberties secured to them under the state and federal constitutions,” the plaintiffs argue in the complaint.
The plaintiffs note that S.B. 315 “criminalizes all legal and consensual working relationships between all SOBs and all 18-20-year-old people.”
“There are no exceptions,” the complaint states. “It is now illegal for any SOB to employ or contract with any man or woman to perform any kind of work or service—cashier, store clerk, valet, bartender, waitress, janitor, security guard, secretary, DJ, or exotic dancer—if that person is under 21 years of age.”
The complaint also asserts that the law “bears no rational relationship to its purported objectives and flies in the face of common sense.”
Citing the case Moore v. Sticks Billiards, the plaintiffs note that “Texas law sets ‘the age of majority in this state [at] 18 years,’ the age at which a person is free to buy and gift lotto tickets, sell alcohol, marry, enter into contracts, cast a ballot, fight and die for their country, and be held responsible for their crimes up to and including execution.”
“In all respects, ‘an eighteen-year-old is an adult under the laws of this state and presumably capable of making adult decisions’—except, apparently, when it comes to where and with whom he or she decides to lawfully earn a living,” the complaint adds.
While the law targets adult businesses, the plaintiffs also note that it was a crime committed in a context quite different from a “sexually oriented business” that appears to have inspired the new law.
“One of S.B. 315’s legislative proponents, State Representative Shawn Thierry, explained that this legislation’s passage was propelled by the alleged drugging and assault of a young female Capitol staffer by a male lobbyist, which ‘caused the legislation [sic] to respond in a strong manner,’” the plaintiffs point out in the complaint. “Echoing that sentiment, House Speaker Dade Phelan is reported to have ‘called on lawmakers and others to do more to protect women working in the Capitol and participating in legislative business amid a criminal investigation into whether a lobbyist recently drugged a staffer during a downtown meeting.’”
The complaint observes that “rather than passing new laws to protect the young women who work at the Capitol—an establishment that some have cited as harboring a combustible mixture of older men, young women, late-night alcohol consumption, and a ‘culture that many female staffers say often leads to allegations of misconduct and harassment being brushed under the rug by those with the power to act’ —lawmakers targeted other establishments: SOBs.”
The complaint alleges that the new law violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by abridging the plaintiffs’ free speech and right to associational liberty, the right to due process guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Texas Constitution’s analogous “due course of law” clause found under Article I, § 19. The complaint also alleges the new law violates the Equal Protection Clause of both the U.S. and Texas constitutions.
The plaintiffs seek declaratory relief holding that as amended by the new law, section of the Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code, Texas Labor Code and Texas Penal Code now violate the state and federal constitutions. The plaintiffs also seek preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to prevent enforcement of the law, as well as leave from the court to bring the case as a class action. Finally, should they prevail, the complaint asserts that the plaintiffs “are entitled to recover reasonable and necessary attorneys’ fees and expert fees.”
You can read the full complaint here. The lawsuit was filed Monday, June 14. YNOT will monitor the case going forward and report on significant developments, including the state’s eventual answer to the complaint.
Texas State Capitol Image by LoneStarMike via Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
