City of Erie v. Pap's A. M.

Erie v. Pap's A. M.
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 10, 1999 Decided March 29, 2000
Full case name	City of Erie, et al. v. Pap's A. M., tdba "Kandyland"
Citations	529 U.S. 277 (more) 120 S. Ct. 1382; 146 L. Ed. 2d 265
Case history
Prior	553 Pa. 348, 719 A.2d 273. The state supreme court determined that petitioner City's ordinance banning public nudity violated respondent operator of totally nude dancing establishment's right to freedom of expression under U.S. Const. amend. I.
Holding
The ordinance was content-neutral because it regulated conduct alone, did not target nudity that contained an erotic message, and petitioner's interest in preventing harmful secondary effects associated with adult entertainment establishments was not related to the suppression of the exotic message conveyed by nude dancing. The O'Brien test for evaluating restrictions on symbolic speech therefore applied, and was successfully met. Reversed.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	O'Connor (Parts I and II), joined by Rehnquist, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer
Plurality	O'Connor (Parts III and IV), joined by Rehnquist, Kennedy, Breyer
Concurrence	Scalia, joined by Thomas
Concur/dissent	Souter
Dissent	Stevens, joined by Ginsburg
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Amend. I

Erie v. Pap's A. M., 529 U.S. 277 (2000), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States regarding nude dancing as free speech. The court held that an ordinance banning public nudity did not violate the operator of a totally nude entertainment establishment's constitutional right to free speech.^[1]