The Missouri Supreme Court has thrown out the legislature’s effort to regulate adult entertainment clubs. Bob Priddy looks at the ruling. Representatives of adult clubs say lawmakers took a bill on drunk driving and added sections on sexually oriented materials—limiting nudity and certain sexual activities in cabarets or adult clubs and prohibiting private viewing rooms in adult entertainment facilities. A circuit judge had ruled those provisions were in-valid and unenforceable…because they were not the subject of the original bill. The state constitution prohibits adding language that is not germane to a bill’s original subject. The state supreme court says those provisions were–as the court puts it–not remotely connected to the original purpose of the bill. The court says the addition of the adult entertainment sections “constitute a textbook example of the legislative log rolling” that the constitution prohibits. The court says the provisions on alcohol-related traffic offenses are not affected by the ruling throwing out the adult entertainment sections.
