X-Rated Businesses Get Reprieve : Compromise: A settlement in a lawsuit against the city will allow 13 existing adult firms to remain in the Valley. New ones would face zoning restrictions.

Ending a four-year legal battle, the city of Los Angeles has settled a lawsuit that challenged how the city regulates X-rated bookstores, cabarets, arcades and other adult-oriented businesses, according to court documents.

Lawyers for the 20 adult businesses that filed the federal case in 1991 called the settlement a “100% victory” over a city law they say violated the businesses’ legal freedoms. Thirteen of the 20 are in the San Fernando Valley.

The city attorney’s office could not be reached for comment Monday.

The plaintiffs filed the suit to challenge a 1986 ordinance that made it illegal for adult entertainment businesses to operate within 500 feet of a residential area, church, school or public park or within 1,000 feet of another adult-oriented business.

What made the ordinance more restrictive than other zoning laws was that it required such businesses to move or shut down within five years after the law took effect.

Under the settlement, signed Feb. 27 by attorneys for both sides, the 20 businesses that challenged the ordinance are allowed to continue at their current sites but the city can enforce the law elsewhere.

The plaintiffs had argued in federal court that the zoning law was simply intended to close all adult businesses in violation of their constitutional right to free speech.

A land-use study financed by the plaintiffs found that less than 2.46% of city land was actually available to adult entertainment businesses, their lawyers said.

A district court judge sided with the businesses and imposed an injunction halting the city from enforcing the ordinance. The city appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court, both of which declined to overturn the injunction.

Since then, both sides had been trying to settle the case rather than go to trial.

“What the city intended to do was essentially to get rid of all these businesses,” said John H. Weston, one of the attorneys representing the adult businesses. “It was no great surprise the courts said it is not allowed.”