Miller et al. v. Civil City of South Bend
"Miller et al. v. Civil City of South Bend" is a significant legal case centered on the intersection of First Amendment rights and local public indecency laws in Indiana. Initiated in 1985 by adult-entertainment entrepreneurs and dancers, the lawsuit sought to challenge a state law that prohibited nudity in public venues, arguing that it infringed upon their rights to free expression. The case followed an earlier ruling by the Indiana Supreme Court, which had defined the same statute as applicable only to conduct, not expressive activities.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ultimately reversed a lower court's decision, affirming that nude barroom dancing, when performed for entertainment, qualifies as protected expressive conduct under the First Amendment. The appeals court referenced prior Supreme Court rulings, emphasizing that nudity does not inherently disqualify an activity from constitutional protection when it is combined with expressive intent. This case highlights ongoing debates about freedom of expression, public morality, and the legal boundaries surrounding adult entertainment, reflecting broader societal attitudes towards art, expression, and regulation.
Miller et al. v. Civil City of South Bend
Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Decided: May 25, 1990
Significance: This decision held that nonobscene barroom nude dancing constituted “expressive activity,” as opposed to “mere conduct,” and thus deserved First Amendment protection
This case represents an attempt to navigate the First Amendment’s often elusive boundary between expression and conduct. The suit was originally brought in 1985 by several adult-entertainment entrepreneurs and dancers in an effort to prevent the state of Indiana from enforcing its public indecency law, which banned nudity in public places, against them. The plaintiffs challenged the statute as an unconstitutional infringement on their First Amendment rights of expression. In rebuttal, the state justified its law as an attempt to protect the public morality and family structure.
In an earlier case, the same statute had been challenged before the Indiana Supreme Court on overbreadth grounds. In that 1979 suit, the plaintiffs claimed that in addition to its permissible restrictions, Indiana’s statute restricted constitutionally protected rights of free speech and expression. The Indiana Supreme Court had rejected this contention and interpreted the statute to apply to conduct alone and not to forms of expressive activity. Moreover, the court held that barroom dancing was “mere conduct,” which could be constitutionally prohibited by the state.
In this later case, the district court for the Northern District of Indiana was asked to consider the statute as applied to nonobscene nude dancing. The court was able to skirt the definition of “obscenity” because the state conceded that the activity in question was not obscene. Instead, the state argued that the activity in question was “mere conduct,” outside the realm of First Amendment protection. After viewing a videotape of the challenged activity, the district court agreed and held that nude barroom dancing was not expressive activity and thus could be prohibited by the State. Miller et al. v. Civil City of South Bend marked an appeal from that ruling.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed the Indiana district court to find that nude barroom dancing, when performed for entertainment, was a form of expression deserving of First Amendment protection. The appeals court reached this result by relying on several strands of U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Most important, in its 1981 decision, Schad v. Mt. Ephraim, the Supreme Court had invalidated a zoning ordinance that prohibited all live entertainment and confirmed the First Amendment’s protection of live entertainment. The Supreme Court clarified that nudity, or sexual content, does not automatically remove an activity or material from the ambit of First Amendment protection, although nudity alone, when not combined with some form of expressive conduct, was not protected.
In its invalidation of Indiana’s public nudity statute as applied to nude barroom dancing, the appeals court rejected the dissent’s suggestion that courts should distinguish between “high” and “low” art, on the grounds that such a determination risks affording unpopular forms of expression no constitutional protection at all. Instead, the court reiterated the principles at the heart of First Amendment protection: All expression is presumptively protected against government interference and restraint, and the government cannot prohibit the expression of an idea simply because the idea is offensive or distasteful.