Sex Shops Launch Counterattack on ’78 Law That Cuts at Core of Business

“Adult entertainment” businesses in Los Angeles have begun to fight a city law that severely restricts their operations, after years of reluctant acceptance. One by one, the owners of such establishments, which cater to sexual fantasies through live strip shows and the sale of books and videos, are rebelling against a much-amended 1978 Los Angeles zoning ordinance forbidding such businesses from locating near schools, religious institutions, public parks and each other. Most of the businesses are in the San Fernando Valley.

One Van Nuys establishment got around a possible zoning violation by offering for sale Popular Mechanics, National Geographic and Time magazines, thereby legally shedding the label of an adult bookstore.

Appealing Citations

Several other adult businesses--all in the Valley except one on Western Avenue in Hollywood--have individually chosen to appeal citations from city Department of Building and Safety inspectors. The appeals to higher city authorities clearly are being made with an eye toward an eventual legal challenge.

And one other business, Le Sex Shoppe on Vanowen Street in North Hollywood, is in court fighting a misdemeanor complaint filed by the city attorney’s office.

In short, the owners of adult entertainment businesses are no longer taking the city’s restrictions lying down.

“We think the ordinance at this point is shot full of constitutional defects,” said David M. Brown, a Beverly Hills attorney who says he represents the owners of many of the adult entertainment businesses in Los Angeles, including Le Sex Shoppe.

“It’s been made pretty obvious that the purpose of the law is to completely eliminate the bookstore industry,” he continued. “But don’t think the entire adult bookstore industry is simply going to pack up and leave.”

But the city’s legal minds and the officials empowered to enforce the ordinance are confident that it is on strong legal footing, especially since similar laws in other cities have successfully withstood court challenges.

“It’s clearly not our intent to wipe out adult entertainment businesses,” said Claudia McGee-Henry, a deputy city attorney who helped draft the Los Angeles ordinance. “The law is legally sound and perfectly appropriate.”

For some time after the City Council unanimously adopted the restrictions, nary a peep was heard from the industry. The ordinance, modeled after a Detroit law, uses zoning regulations to disperse sex establishments, rather than confine them to a single area, as in Boston.

Like other cities throughout the country rushing to adopt a Detroit-type law, the Los Angeles City Council blamed the clustering of adult entertainment businesses for increases in prostitution, robberies, assaults and loitering.

Under the Los Angeles ordinance, businesses that primarily provide adult or X-rated entertainment are prohibited from being within 1,000 feet of each other and within 500 feet of any school, church or public park.

What Ordinance Covers

The ordinance includes within the definition of “adult entertainment” adult arcades (often called peep shows), bookstores, cabarets, adult motels and theaters, and sexual-encounter establishments such as bathhouses and massage parlors.

Brown said most of the industry did not argue with the original law. “It was a pretty reasonable ordinance,” he said. “If the city had left the ordinance the way they originally enacted it, my guess is that there would be no challenges to it.”

In fact, Franklin Eberhard, the city’s chief zoning administrator, said that, for years, not even one appeal of a citation issued to an adult business for a zoning violation came across his desk.

All that changed, however, as amendments were added to the ordinance, Brown and others representing the industry contend.

There were two significant changes in the past three years. One prohibits the fairly common practice of having two types of adult entertainment activities--for instance, a bookstore and a video arcade--operating under the same roof.

Second Change

The other prohibits all X-rated establishments, including those already in existence, within 500 feet of a residential area. Existing establishments have, for the most part, until March 10, 1988, to comply. Most will be affected by the residential restriction, city officials concede, though they insist there are areas of the city where the businesses can relocate.

“It is not our attempt to put anybody out of business,” Eberhard said. “We did an extensive study and identified a number of potential sites where these businesses can go.”

Owners of adult entertainment businesses are aware that compliance with the restriction on locating near residences is more than a year away. Thus, most have turned their immediate attention to opposing the provision outlawing more than one type of X-rated business at one location.

Eberhard, who has sided with city inspectors in every case appealed to him, said of the restrictions, “Any or all will certainly be tested in court.” He added, “I am confident in our attorneys who prepared the law.”

Le Sex Shoppe in North Hollywood is already in court. The business, which Brown says has been at the same location for more than 10 years, was cited in 1984 and 1985 for operating three adult businesses under the same roof--a bookstore, a video arcade and a live entertainment theater, said Robert Albrecht, a building and safety investigator in the Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks, Studio City and North Hollywood areas.

The city attorney eventually filed misdemeanor charges against Le Sex Shoppe, adding to the alleged zoning violations a charge of operating without a proper permit, said Martin Vranicar, supervising deputy city attorney of the Van Nuys branch.

Charge Thrown Out

A municipal judge in Van Nuys has thrown out on a technicality the charge of operating without a permit. The rest of the case is “winding itself through the pretrial phases,” Vranicar said.

Brown, who says his firm represents about half the city’s more than 50 adult bookstores--a large portion of them in the Valley--said that, of all the provisions in the city zoning law, a ban on operating multiple businesses is the most legally vulnerable.

Roger Diamond, an attorney who also represents adult business owners, said the ordinance ties their hands.

“You can go to a gas station and buy beer; you can go to Dodger Stadium and get a hot dog,” Diamond said. “I think it’s unfair for the city to pick on adult businesses and say they are the only ones who can’t provide more than one service.”

Eight Appeals

In addition to the Le Sex Shoppe case, as many as eight appeals of building and safety citations have come before zoning administrator Eberhard.

Last week, the owners of the Big Apple on Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood went before the Board of Zoning Appeals to protest citations for operating a bookstore and an arcade on the same premises. The board rejected the appeal, Eberhard said.

“Basically, they were just exhausting their administrative appeals,” the zoning administrator said. “They were appealing the citations purely on constitutional grounds, and the Board of Zoning Appeals does not deal with the constitutionality of the law.”

Not all X-rated businesses are taking their cases to court. Diamond, who has sued on behalf of clients to overturn legislation regulating adult businesses in cities such as Escondido, Fresno and Bakersfield, found a way around the law for a Van Nuys adult entertainment establishment.

Legal Solution

“I had a client on Van Nuys Boulevard who had a typical adult arcade and a bookstore where all the tapes were adult and all the books were adult,” said Diamond, declining to name the business. “Each one of those operated under one roof, and the city considered that to be illegal.”

The solution? Since the ordinance generally describes an adult bookstore as being a place where a “substantial amount” of the reading material sold is X-rated, Diamond instructed his client to offer a large number of non-adult books and magazines for sale. The city was satisfied.

“The reasoning under the ordinance is stupid,” Diamond argued. “It still looks like an adult business, and from the outside, it says an adult arcade. But when you walk inside you have 100% adult arcade and a substantial number of books and magazines that are not adult in nature.

“It does not accomplish what it was intended to. It proves that the ordinance is self-defeating.”