The city won a ruling yesterday strengthening its ability to regulate adult video, theater and bookstores following an eight-year battle pitting the city against establishments claiming their free speech rights were being infringed upon. The decision found that a number of adult video stores and theaters that supposedly operated with less than 40 percent of their space for adult uses in fact displayed adult products in more space, and were predominantly adult establishments, the city’s Law Department, which handled the case, said in a statement. Two video stores mentioned in the decision as being possibly in violation of the law Include Amsterdam Video at 287 Amsterdam Avenue at 74th Street and Blue Door Video at 87 First Avenue at 5th Street. Employees at each location said they were not familiar with the lawsuit and declined to comment. “It is obvious to community residents and the city alike that many of these so-called ’60/40′ establishments are shams created by adult businesses in an attempt to avoid complying with the law,” the city’s criminal justice coordinator John Feinblatt said in the statement. [more]
Posts Tagged ‘administrative law division’
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A Long Island City strip club is claiming in its second lawsuit in seven months that the city is trampling its First Amendment rights in a broader effort to rid the city of adult entertainment. TC Queens Entertainment, owner of the topless nightclub Scandals located in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge, claims in the lawsuit filed Jan. 15 in New York State Supreme Court that the city is limiting the number of areas where clubs can set up shop or remain, by first legalizing neighborhoods for adult use, then later whittling away at them through subsequent zoning changes. “The city has engaged in a systematic campaign to shrink the adult zones,” the suit says, to “play whack-a-mole with the First Amendment.” The TC Queens lawsuit is an effort to block a Dec. 15 decision by the city Board of Standards and Appeals that makes the Queens Plaza club located at 24-03 Queens Plaza North as currently configured, illegal. [more]
