Government Regulation of "Adult" Businesses Through Zoning and Anti-Nudity Ordinances: Debunking the Legal Myth of Negative Secondary Effects

Municipalities that prohibit "adult" businesses from operating in certain areas have justified these "zoning" regulations by advancing the idea that the presence of the business will have so-called "adverse, or negative secondary effects" on the surrounding community. Most recently, a plurality of the United States Supreme Court has upheld the extension of this doctrine beyond the zoning of adult businesses to the symbolic behavior within them in the form of ordinances banning nudity. This article abstracts and analyzes the methods and major empirical findings of studies conducted by United States municipalities, purporting to detect adverse secondary effects of adult businesses. With few exceptions the methods used in the most frequently cited studies are seriously and often fatally flawed. These studies, relied on by other communities throughout the country, do not adhere to professional standards of scientific inquiry and nearly all fail to meet the basic assumptions necessary to calculate an error rate-a test of the reliability of findings in science. Those studies that are scientifically credible demonstrate either no negative secondary effects associated with adult businesses or a reversal of the presumed negative effect. The implications of the lack of evidence of adverse secondary effects for the regulation of performances within adult businesses are discussed.