A federal judge has denied a group of Dallas strip clubs’ request to stop the city from requiring sexually oriented businesses to close between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. daily.
Attorneys for XTC Cabaret, Silver City Cabaret and Tiger Cabaret argued in a suit filed earlier this year the ordinance and the way Dallas police enforce it are unconstitutional. XTC in particular was willing to comply with the ordinance by not operating as a sexually oriented business after 2 a.m. — which police didn't accept.
U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle ruled Thursday the plaintiffs’ claims are unlikely to succeed in a court of law and denied their request for a preliminary injunction more than two weeks after a hearing on the motion.
In her ruling, Boyle said the businesses were sexually oriented regardless of what time of day they stopped operating as such.
“The Ordinance requires [sexually oriented businesses] to be closed after 2:00 a.m. regardless of the business’s intended activities," Boyle wrote. "Thus, their conduct clearly falls within the scope of the Ordinance independent of the policy."
The argument that XTC and other clubs aren’t primarily sexually oriented because they only operate as such some of the time “strains credulity,” Boyle said.
“Whether a business is [sexually oriented] depends on its operations generally or its primary purpose, not the nature of its operations during a specific, limited window of time,” she wrote, citing the language of the city’s ordinance. “To allow a business to skirt the requirements of Chapter 41A whenever it is not engaged in the specific activity that renders it an SOB would vitiate the City’s ability to enforce the law.”
Lawyers for the business owners did not respond to requests for comment Friday morning. The city of Dallas declined to comment due to pending litigation.
The city defines sexually oriented businesses as any establishment where the primary business is to offer services or products, “intended to provide sexual stimulation or sexual gratification to the customer.” That includes adult bookstores, video stores and cabarets.
The city officially began enforcing the curfew Nov. 30. Court documents show Dallas police sent out a notice ahead of time letting XTC, Silver City and other sexually oriented business licensees know they were to close during the required hours or face a 30-day suspension of their license, up to $4,000 in fines and potential criminal charges.
Attorneys for XTC said the club would serve food and non-alcoholic drinks to those who stayed after 2 a.m. and only occasionally put on artistic, nonsexual shows at that time. Police replied that the club would need a new certificate of occupancy to operate as a restaurant. Regardless, XTC would have to close at 2 a.m. because it’s licensed as a sexually oriented business.
The plaintiffs argued DPD’s enforcement of the ordinance based on the notice unfairly applies to all businesses with sex-based licenses regardless of the activities they actually put on after 2 a.m.
But even though DPD’s policy may be inconsistent with the ordinance, the city’s final policymaker — the Dallas City Council — didn’t sign off on it, so Boyle ruled it’s not the city’s actual policy.
This is the second federal challenge to the ordinance since it was first passed in January 2022. The Association of Club Executives of Dallas first requested a judge block the ordinance in a lawsuit filed the same day the ordinance was approved. The suit alleged the city rule relied on flawed data and targeted strip clubs’ First Amendment rights to freedom of expression specifically because they're sexual.
That judge sided with the plaintiffs, which again included Silver City and four other businesses, and temporarily stopped the city from enforcing the ordinance. But the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision sided with the city, finding the data and studies that linked sexually oriented businesses to crime were indeed valid.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case in March.
DPD presented its findings to the city council in 2022 to push for the curfew as a safety measure. Their data showed from 2019 to 2021 police received more calls to sexually oriented businesses between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. than between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.
Residents told the city council the curfew would threaten jobs and culturally harm the city’s LGBTQ community.
Casey Wallace, an attorney for the plaintiffs, echoed some of those sentiments at last month's hearing.
“There’s hundreds of people, their livelihoods are being affected,” he said. “They’re being put out of work.”
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