Local News in Brief : Placentia : City Opens Its Tent to Fortunetelling
The City Council approved an ordinance Tuesday allowing fortunetellers to open businesses in the city.
Nearly three years after the state Supreme Court prohibited laws banning fortunetelling businesses, the council voted 3-1 to delete city rules prohibiting such business and to license and regulate fortunetellers.
Councilman Norman Z. Eckenrode, who cast the dissenting vote, said that he felt the amended ordinance should have tighter restrictions on fortunetelling businesses.
Police Chief H.A. Fischer said that because of an “oversight on our part,” it has taken the city almost three years to come into compliance with the state law. Several Orange County cities repealed their ban on fortunetellers within months of the high court’s decision that a ban on fortunetelling violated free-speech protections of the state Constitution.
For more than 20 years, the city had an ordinance that prohibited telling fortunes for a fee.
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