David Souter, City of Erie v. Pap's A. M. — Concurrence-dissent Souter (2000)
“ The proposition that the presence of nude dancing establishments increases the incidence of prostitution and violence is amenable to empirical treatment, and the city councilors who enacted Erie's ordinance are in a position to look to the facts of their own community's experience as well as to experiences elsewhere. ”
David Souter, City of Erie v. Pap's A. M. — Concurrence-dissent Souter (2000)
“ By these standards, the record before us today is deficient in its failure to reveal any evidence on which Erie may have relied, either for the seriousness of the threatened harm or for the efficacy of its chosen remedy. The plurality does the best it can with the materials to hand, see ante, at 297–298, but the pickings are slim. The plurality quotes the ordinance's preamble asserting that over the course of more than a century the city council had expressed "findings" of detrimental secondary effects flowing from lewd and immoral profitmaking activity in public places. ”
David Souter, City of Erie v. Pap's A. M. — Concurrence-dissent Souter (2000)
“ As [p. 315] to current fact, the city council's closest approach to an evidentiary record on secondary effects and their causes was the statement of one councilor, during the debate over the ordinance, who spoke of increases in sex crimes in a way that might be construed as a reference to secondary effects. See App. 44. But that reference came at the end of a litany of concerns ("free condoms in schools, drive-by shootings, abortions, suicide machines," and declining student achievement test scores) that do not seem to be secondary effects of nude dancing. ”
